Welsh patent applications: the results are in!

A couple of days ago the IPKat asked his readers how many patent applications they thought might have been filed in Welsh at the UK-IPO since this possibility was made available by the new Patents Rule 2007, offering a prize of a bunch of daffodils to the first one to get the right answer. 

(right: Tufty's bodyguard Pod guards the limited supply of daffodils at Tufty's country residence)

The IPKat received a huge range of guesstimates, ranging all the way up to a rather optimistic 4,587. One anonymous commenter even tried to work out how many might have been filed by searching on espacenet (a futile exercise, of course, since very few applications since December 2007 will have been published by now anyway). Most people, however, seemed to think that the number would be very low. 

The IPKat can now exclusively reveal that the very first commenter got the answer spot on. Commiserations go to Guy Veysey, Louisa McDonnell and John Collins, who came in just too late.  Exactly zero applications have been filed at the UK-IPO in Welsh over the past 13 months. Well done to whoever anonymous person made that comment.  A large bunch of daffodils is waiting at Tufty's country pad for you to come and collect in a few weeks, once they have had a chance to grow.  

On a more serious note, the IPKat wonders what the point was in putting the effort in to change the law in the UK to provide the option of filing and prosecuting applications in Welsh, and provide a facility at the IPO to deal with them, when it was clearly an option that nobody was asking for, and nobody has in fact seen the need to use.  And in case anybody pipes up about the Welsh Language Act or similar, the IPKat would like to first be pointed to the exact legal requirement that made the change necessary. 

Merpel wonders whether all this fuss the IPKat is making will perhaps prompt some Welsh-fluent patent attorney to file one just to spoil the record.

Tufty says he just wants to keep hold of his daffodils for now.

Important news for Welsh patentees

Ever since the Patents Rules 1995 were replaced by the Patents Rules 2007, the IPKat has been wondering how popular the newly available facility for filing and prosecuting UK patent applications in Welsh as well as English would be (for some background and sometimes irate IPKat commentary on the subject, see here, here, here and here).  He was thinking recently that the time had come to count up how many applications had actually been filed in Welsh since the new rules came into force back in December 2007.  

Rather than wading through the many thousands of application details published on the patent register, the IPKat thought that he would use the facility offered by the IPO under the UK Freedom of Information Act to ask the question directly, since he suspected that the IPO will have been keeping a close eye on this important issue anyway, and would have all the relevant details to hand.  The IPO have now, in double quick time, kindly come back with an answer.  The IPKat doesn't want to give the game away to everyone just yet, so he will let his readers make educated guesses as to the exact number.  The first person to leave a comment with the exact number wins a bunch of daffodils. 

UPDATE: See the result in the IPKat's later post here.