The material below is presented as ‘frequently-asked questions’, or ‘FAQs’. It is designed to respond to initial queries about the review and its purpose. We will add to and update the FAQs over time to maintain their currency and usefulness as the review progresses.
What is the purpose and focus of the Review?
The purpose of IPReg’s Education Review is to ensure that qualification routes into the trade mark attorney and patent attorney professions remain high-quality, accessible, sustainable and responsive to current and projected changes in professional practice, employer and consumer needs.
The Review is taking a ‘fundamentals approach’ to explore what needs to inform the Review, its proposals for any change, and its eventual outputs and outcomes. This includes to understand changes in each profession’s scope of practice. The Review will initially explore the professional competencies or capabilities required for contemporary practice in each profession at the point of registration, informed by stakeholder insights and feedback on the changing needs of employers, consumers and models of service delivery.
The Review will build on the above to identify whether and how qualification routes need to change to respond to changing needs, as well as how IPReg accreditation requirements and processes need to be updated to reflect changing needs.
The purpose and scope of the Review hinges on securing stakeholder input and feedback. The findings and outcomes of previous reviews of the professions' qualification routes can also valuably inform this Review.
What is IPReg’s role in education?
The Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg) was set up in 2010 to enact the regulatory functions delegated to it by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and the Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys (CITMA). IPReg has delegated regulatory functions and responsibilities specifically relating to education. These derive from the following legislation:
- Legal Services Act, 2007; section 21
- Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988; section 275A
- Trade Marks Act, 1994; section 83A.
Under these arrangements, IPReg has the authority to set education and training requirements for individuals seeking to become an authorised trade mark or patent attorney in the UK. It determines the qualifications, experience and training required for registration. It also ensures that education standards for the professions align with the following regulatory objectives set by the Legal Services Board (LSB): protecting public interest, promoting competition, and improving access to justice.
IPReg is accountable to the LSB for how it enacts its regulatory responsibilities, including its education functions. Any proposals for change arising from the Education Review will require LSB approval before they can be implemented.
Further information on the regulatory context in which we are undertaking the Review is available here.
What is within the scope of the Review?
Intended focuses within the Education Review include the following:
- Identifying the respective ‘day-one’ professional capabilities required for future registration and practice as a patent attorney and trade mark attorney.
- Where appropriate, identifying additional capabilities that need to be developed at post-registration level to meet regulatory requirements, potentially depending on registrants’ scope of practice, practice environment and role.
- Exploring how professionalism and fulfilling professional ethical duties are fully embedded in capability requirements and qualification routes for each profession.
- Exploring the implications of developments in AI and LawTech for the professions’ education and practice.
- Reviewing best practice in contemporary approaches to professional and higher education and assessment, with a particular focus on high-stakes assessments, supporting trainees’ work-based learning, and the needs of those supporting trainees.
- Embedding a consideration of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) issues, including to understand and address current barriers to entry, optimise potential enablers for widening access to the professions, and explore the potential role of apprenticeships in achieving this.
- Reviewing how, as IPReg, we maintain rigour, proportionality and accountability in how we fulfil our delegated regulatory education functions, including in how we enact our accreditation requirements and processes.
What is not in scope of the Review?
IPReg introduced new CPD requirements for registrants in July 2023. Guidance on the requirements was updated following IPReg’s Continuing Competence Thematic Review in 2024. Given these recent changes, we do not intend that IPReg’s CPD requirements will form a focus of the Education Review. However, it will be useful to explore how qualification routes prepare trainees for their future engagement with IPReg’s updated CPD requirements, including with the latter’s increased focuses on critical reflection, engaging in CPD activity to meet individual development needs, and the outcomes, value and impact of CPD activity.
IPReg recognises that CITMA and CIPA, as well as other stakeholders, provide valuable post-registration learning and development opportunities for members of each profession. It is not the intention for post-registration education to be considered within the Review, except where this fits with how IPReg fulfils its regulatory responsibilities.
What are the intended outputs of the Review?
Key intended outputs from the Education Review are as follows:
- Updated IPReg competence or capability frameworks for trade mark attorneys and patent attorneys to which qualification routes will need to map from an agreed point in the future.
- Updated education and training standards against which IPReg will consider qualification routes for (re-)accreditation from an agreed future point.
- An updated quality assurance and enhancement method through which IPReg will consider qualification routes for (re-)accreditation (against the updated capability frameworks and standards), again, from an agreed future point.
The precise nature and content of the intended outputs will be determined through Review activity and the nature of any proposed changes to qualification route requirements arising from it. This process of development will be strongly informed by stakeholder collaboration, input and feedback.
Will apprenticeships play a role in the Review?
IPReg has indicated its support for apprenticeships being explored as contributing to qualification routes into the patent and trade mark attorney professions; see here. This is to achieve an increased focus on diversity and inclusion within the professions and enhance responsiveness to employers’ workforce needs.
IPReg will continue to engage with current activity to develop a patent scientist/engineer degree apprenticeship in ways that fit with its regulatory functions.
The principles of modern apprenticeships, if not the formal structures and funding streams of apprenticeships, should also have relevance to the Education Review. For example, this could be to achieve a strengthened integration of trainees’ work experience, learning and assessment to develop and demonstrate the updated professional capabilities required to meet changing professional practice, employer and consumer needs.
How is the Review addressing diversity and inclusion issues?
One of the drivers for undertaking the Education Review was to explore how entry routes into the trade mark and patent attorney professions can be widened, while ensuring that high education and professional standards are upheld. We are keen to understand current barriers and how enablers to increased diversity and inclusion in each profession can be optimised. This includes in terms of individuals’ experience as trainees and as they progress in their chosen profession after qualification and registration.
Widening entry to the professions was one of the key themes of our Call for Evidence and Feedback. Information on this theme is available here.
We have developed a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) framework to underpin our approach to addressing these issues in the Review. The framework is available here.
Will the Review lead to changes to current qualification routes?
The potential need for and precise nature of any changes to the professions’ current qualification routes will be considered within the Review. It is not a given. Due consideration of whether and what kind of change will be needed must be fully informed by stakeholder input and feedback on changing professional practice, employer and consumer needs and any logical, practical changes to existing qualification routes to meet changing needs. A key issue to explore is also how the sustainability of qualification routes can be maintained. The dual imperatives to be upheld are maintaining entry into each profession and high education and professional standards.
Stakeholder input and feedback on these kinds of key topics has formed a focus of our Call for Evidence and Feedback. This ran from February to April. Any proposals for change will then be subject to formal consultation in late 2026/early 2027 before they are finalised. In turn, the implementation of any changes will be from a future point. This will be to build in a sufficient lead-in time to their introduction, provide clarity and certainty for all parties, and avoid disruption to any parties.
Information on current qualification routes into the professions is available here.
Information on IPReg’s current approach to accrediting education and examination provision is available here.
Will the Review affect current trainees?
IPReg’s Education Review is future-focused. It is not about making any short-term changes. We are very aware that any future changes risk creating uncertainty and will be potentially distressing and disruptive for current and prospective trainees, as well as for qualification route providers and employers. Any changes arising from the Review will be strongly informed by stakeholder input and feedback, while timeframes for enacting them will be agreed collaboratively and ensure sufficient lead-in time. This will be to give all parties due notice and to enable practical transition arrangements to be planned and enacted.
Careful consideration will be given to ensuring that the transition to any new arrangements does not disadvantage trainees who are preparing to enter each profession in the coming years. IPReg will engage with all stakeholders to plan for any required transition as the Review outputs and outcomes emerge. It will consult on and provide regular updates and guidance on future timeframes to provide clarity and certainty and to support all parties' planning and engagement. In progressing its approach to enacting any changes arising from the Review, IPReg will also draw on learning from other organisations' approach to managing similar changes and doing this collaboratively and within realistic timeframes.
If IPReg can enhance how it enacts its education functions while the Review is still live (e.g. by updating some of its guidance), we will do so, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders. We will ensure that any updates are proportionate and fully align with our current accreditation requirements and processes.
How can stakeholders contribute to the Review?
IPReg is seeking and encouraging stakeholder engagement across the life of the Education Review. We recognise that securing stakeholder input and feedback and exploring issues on a collaborative basis is vital to achieving confidence and trust in the process of the Review and in its future outputs and outcomes. We are keen to build and maintain strong stakeholder links specifically on the Review to maximise opportunities for stakeholder involvement and input. The Education Review is also being informed by an Expert Advisory Group (EAG), while we are setting up an Education Review Reference Group.
What are the current timelines for the Review?
We ran our Call for Evidence and Feedback from February to April 2026. We are analysing responses to the Call, along with feedback gained through a series of topic-based workshops, to inform the development of our Review proposals and outputs between June and early December 2026. We plan to open a public consultation on our proposals and draft outputs by the end of 2026 or beginning of 2027. The consultation will run for at least three months. We will then refine our Review proposals and outputs in light of consultation responses, seek approval from the Legal Services Board (LSB) for our planned changes arising from the Review, and plan transition and implementation arrangements. We plan to achieve confirmed Review outputs and outcomes by September 2027. From this point, transition activity is due to begin. The length of the transition period will depend on the extent of change arising from the Review, with a focus on setting and enacting realistic timeframes for all parties and working in strong collaboration with all parties.
What are the governance structures for the Review?
The Education Review is being overseen by the IPReg Board. The Board’s Education Working Group (EWG) provides more detailed input to IPReg’s assurance processes. The Review is being progressed by a small project team that reports to each meeting of the Board and EWG. Proposed changes arising from the Review will require approval from the Legal Services Board.
How can you keep updated on the Review?
There is a range of ways in which you can remain updated on the Review’s progress. This includes to find out about ways to get involved. We have a regular Review newsletter. To sign up to this, see here. We also post updates on our LinkedIn account; see here. If you would like to sign up to future Review Reference Group online meetings, please email the IPReg Education Review inbox with the subject line Education Review Reference Group: edreview@ipreg.org.uk.
We plan to run a series of webinars from late 2026 into 2027 to promote the Review consultation, and then to share the outputs and outcomes of the Review after the consultation. We will promote these through all the above channels, as well as on our website. We are also grateful to CIPA, CITMA and a range of networks within the IP sector for promoting the Review and the importance and value of engaging with it.
If you have any queries about the Review, please email the project team at edreview@ipreg.org.uk.