Five years at the IPO: farewell to Tim Moss CBE
His leadership coincided with perhaps the most tumultuous period in the office’s history, which included Brexit, COVID-19 and a transformation towards digitization and a ‘customer-first’ culture.
WIPR sat down with the outgoing Moss to reflect on his five years at the helm.
The IPO’s aim has been to refine UK IP policy so that it supports a world-leading IP environment. Is it working?
We set out to change the narrative about intellectual property so it’s more mainstream, so it inspires people. But how? We realised we needed to spread the message that IP is about innovation and about people doing brilliant things.
Everyone is capable of being innovative and creative, so it would be great if everyone could have access to a basic understanding of IP. We set out to change that ‘inaccessible IP’ narrative.
We’re not there yet—we've made some big steps forward on it, but we need to keep going. It's almost a lifetime job. We’ve certainly done some great work in terms of tackling the way that the policy works in the legal framework. One win was making sure the system still worked when we got to the Brexit cliff edge, because legally there were some big things that couldn't happen unless we sorted them out.
And then we started to think ahead - what does the IP framework need to do?
Apart from changing the narrative about IP, it’s also about tackling the big issues like AI. AI poses some really big questions, so we said right, let's tackle them. We were one of the first IP offices to do that.
The AI and IP conference we hosted at the Olympic Stadium three years ago was a fantastic event, followed by the call for views and a consultation. There’s also the work we’ve been doing around standard-essential patents.
Again, we’ve led the way in starting to ask some of those big, challenging questions, and sometimes those questions are global ones. How do we make sure that we really are working with others and taking it forward?
Then there’s the work we're doing on music streaming, on the future of copyright, the work we've done to improve things on education and business support, and so many areas where the office is very much saying OK, how can we take this forward? How can we improve things? What can we do for the future?
Then there’s the fantastic new IPO Counter-Infringement strategy. From a global IP perspective, our work with the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Trading Standards, Border Force and other Anti-Counterfeiting Group members have been ground-breaking.
The new counter-Infringement strategy takes this work to the next level with investment in our intelligence hub, our strategic threat assessment work, stronger links and investment in the North West Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (NWPIPCU). Importantly, on the back of the threat assessment, we’re making a significant impact and inroads towards making it much tougher for IP criminals.
So, to sum up, rather than saying OK, let's just focus on the registering of IP rights we have instead been saying how can we engage with others to make a difference, how can we really help the UK economy? And we’ve been helping to train others in the public sector to say ‘look, knowledge assets and IP are really important and you've got to look after them.’
Brexit and the challenges it posed for the UK’s IP system, will go down as a major event in the IPO’s 170-year history. What are your reflections on leading the organisation through such a substantial change?
There can’t have been that many more momentous things than Brexit. Certainly, it’s one of the most significant events in our history. It's also the one that dominated the organisation for quite a while once we knew it was out there. We just weren't quite sure when it was going to happen or what it would look like.
And then, when we knew, it was full steam ahead to get all the work done to make everything happen at the same time: the trade negotiations, understanding the transitions, all the policy issues, all the engagement with stakeholders and then all the work from a technical and operational perspective. It was a massive piece of work.
I remember in the early days, checking to see if our forms and systems could cope with the additional volume without falling over. There were some really big decisions for the organisation. Once we knew the deadline and had the plan, we then set about doing that huge volume of work to get it all done. There was certainly some scepticism that we could deliver something this big.
Then we had the deadline, December 31, and ultimately nothing else mattered in terms of the change agenda. We just had to get it done.
Now we’re seeing the knock-on impact from that. The volume increases in trademarks and designs, the growth we then had as an organisation. It has had a huge impact on us and sets us up for the future.
But also, I think the other bit we're starting to grapple with is that we now have additional responsibility from a policy perspective—it gives us an opportunity to do some original thinking and consider what's right for the UK, taking account of what's happening in Europe, what's happening around the world.
So I think we're only just starting to get to grips with what the EU exit legacy will mean going forward. Yes, it had a massive impact, but it has been a huge success for the office in terms of what it's achieved—and a really defining moment.
The IPO attracted praise for the way it maintained services for customers and supported its people during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you look back on this extraordinary time, what were some of the standout moments for you?
It was a challenging time, but in many ways, it brought out the best of our core values. It was a massive issue for everyone to negotiate, team effort from everyone, whether it be the facilities teams and the IT teams working together to get the IT kit out to our people, or IT working with the operational teams doing all the workarounds and sorting out alternative solutions for all the manual and paper processes to help keep our customers going.
And then there was the taking of risks to get services online which would otherwise have taken months or years to do. We did it in a matter of days and weeks.
And you know, the big question for us now is how we make sure we keep that agility. We need to make sure we capture the best bits of our successes from that time and carry them forward.
The One IPO Transformation project promises to revolutionise the way customers interact with the IPO’s services. What do you hope the project’s legacy will be when viewed 10-20 years from now?
As I've said several times, this isn't just a change programme that we're running alongside the business—this is the IPO’s future. We've got two objectives—to deliver services for today’s customers and also deliver them for tomorrow.
They're two sides of one coin. It's not a case of running the business today and trying to balance that with making updates—we’ve got to do both and manage it as one thing.
This modernisation will absolutely change the way we do things—our services, and for our customers. In some respects, it will bring some of those services up to the standards that they should be, because we were asking our customers and staff to do some horrible things. And yes, I do mean horrible.
I remember one of my first days in the office when someone showed me through the system. It was easier to set-up a new customer account than find the old one. For some customers, we had 20 or 30 accounts on the system depending on whether a different person had sent the stuff in, and if the spelling was slightly different.
The amount of manual data entry people had to do, and the fact that systems didn't always do what they should have done, something like sixteen different ways of registering an address, different accounts for different rights, systems not talking to each other. This was all because of the limitations and deficiencies of inherited systems that go back a long way. You can only imagine what that has meant for the customer experience and our staff experience too.
So, some of this is about bringing our systems up to speed and up to date. But I think it's also our springboard for the future. You ask the question of what our legacy will be in ten or 20 years—this transformation is the basis for customers being able to access IPO well into the future. We’re transforming our systems so that we can adapt to take advantage of whatever technology will throw at us, whether it be machine learning and AI or whatever's next. It gives us a sound basis to build on for the future.
Essentially, I see it as reorientating the organisation through 90 degrees. We have been very much IP rights focused to date—leading with patents, trademarks and designs. This is because our systems have been set up in that way.
Transformation means taking all that and shifting it 90 degrees and saying no, we'll start with the customer. We're looking at how the customer uses it and then we'll do some work alongside that which will be patent-specific, trademark-specific, design specific... but it all starts with the customer.
The other benefit that transformation will bring us is opening up a gold mine of data that we hold across our systems, that is currently inaccessible.
Getting this right will open up those datasets to allow us to do new things, allow customers to do new things, and potentially new customers will be able to do things with it and link it with other data that government may have. Opening up this data, making it accessible, has the potential to open up the whole innovation ecosystem.
You have made it clear that inclusion is something you’re passionate about. What has this work meant for you during your time in the role?
I think the fundamental thing for me is that it's a question of fairness.
Ultimately there shouldn't be any differences - no restrictions on who we're bringing into the organisation. If we're not actually reflecting the society around us when we recruit people, then something's not quite right. You know, from what I've seen at the IPO, there’s never been any deliberate intention to exclude, but sometimes we need to review our process and policies to make sure they continue to reflect this ethos and do all they can to promote that inclusivity.
A great example was when someone said to me that one of our requirements for recruiting patent examiners was that we really wanted them to have PhDs and Masters’ Degrees. Statistics tell us that recruiting those who have a PhD or Masters Degree is likely to lead to a higher gender imbalance than if we seek to attract those who have good science degrees or engineering degrees in STEM subjects. So by saying that our Patent Examiner recruits have got to have a PhD or a Masters, we are restricting our chance of getting fairness from a gender perspective.
Scrapping the requirement to have those qualifications opened up our pool for people to apply. We can still select the people we want, the best and the brightest, but we're not putting that restriction in at day one, so we're getting a much more inclusive pool coming in. We need to make sure the system is fair, and that we end up recruiting as diverse a group of people as we want to because that’s good for the IPO.
Likewise, internally, we do our best to make sure that groups aren't disadvantaged, because it's the right thing to do and because we want people to be treated fairly. Who wouldn't, you know? And as I said it's about fairness, that equality of opportunity.
And then there’s understanding what other barriers may exist for people. So yes, we’ve still got a long way to go, so much more we need to do. It's something that is absolutely fundamental to the way an organisation should be run.
What has been your most memorable experience and what will you miss most about the IPO?
It’s really tricky to pick my most memorable moments—there have been so many. One thing I've been particularly proud of has been that whole focus on the customer: setting up the whole customer function, everyone pulling together saying “how can we make things better for the customer?”. It has been brilliant to see.
Obviously getting the Brexit task over the line was amazing too. Those are some of the big things from a business perspective that have been achieved through sheer team effort. Ultimately the most memorable stuff comes from the organisation, its culture, and the people.
I have to say that throwing myself off the Newport Transporter Bridge for charity was a memorable challenge, given that I'm not the greatest fan of heights...although I found walking up much harder than coming down.
Another memorable day was at the end of the first year of COVID when we did a virtual get-together on Christmas Day. We had dozens of our people there. That was really great, and we got some lovely comments back. It was just nice to be able to do that with our staff.
I've travelled to some fantastic countries as part of our work—and do things I will probably never get to do again. I've met some amazing people in amazing organisations in different parts of the world. I've been to China a couple of times, the US, India, all around Europe, Singapore. It’s been a privilege, helping to build IPO’s fantastic international reputation.
And what will I miss? Well, I won’t miss IP as I’ll still be seeing it all around me, as we all do in our everyday lives, but I will miss the people. While my memory on some things may fade very quickly, it's the people in the organisation that I’ll miss the most.
And finally…?
I can assure you that the IPO remains in safe hands with our interim CEO Adam [Williams], and our strong and capable board and leadership group. This team has the experience and stability to take the IP forward, in these exciting times for IP and innovation.
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