My right honourable friend the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property has today made the following Statement.

I have tasked the Intellectual Property Office with managing and shaping an intellectual property system which encourages innovation and creativity, balances the needs of rights holders and the public, provides support to businesses on managing and exploiting their intellectual property, and stimulates economic growth.

I have set the Intellectual Property Office the following targets for 2010-11:

be able by March 2011 to quantify the level of IP rights and estimate IP’s impact on the knowledge economy;

demonstrable improvement in stakeholder perceptions of the impact of our international policy engagement compared with 2009-10 results;

review by March 2011 the UK’s system of moral rights, by comparison with our international partners and by conducting an appraisal of any impact on our economic and cultural environment;

issue 80 per cent of patent search reports within four months of request;

give good customer service in processing patent applications in 95 per cent of quality assured cases;

clear all outstanding patent examinations older than 49 months by March 2011;

register 85 per cent of correctly filed applications for trade marks, where no opposition has been filed, within four months, 90 per cent within five months and 95 per cent within six months;

make the correct decision on registration on at least 99 per cent of trade mark applications;

register 95 per cent of correctly filed design applications within one month;

our business outreach enables 80 per cent of its recipients to improve the IP performance of their business or the businesses they advise;

achieve a return on capital employed of 4 per cent;

identify savings equivalent to 5 per cent of the operating costs of areas where we make IT investment decisions and from contracts renewed through the procurement process;

90 per cent of IPO customers will be satisfied with the service they receive; and demonstrable improvement in our people’s perceptions of leadership and change management capability at all levels of the IPO compared with 2009.