Our mission
We are the official government body responsible for Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom. These rights include:
- Patents
- Designs
- Trade marks
- Copyright
We
are an Executive
Agency of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) 
.
We promote innovation by providing a clear, accessible and widely understood IP system, which enables the economy and society to benefit from knowledge and ideas.
Our
corporate strategy 
(3.16Mb) sets out our goals for 2011-16, to enable us to achieve our vision:
The full potential
of ideas, knowledge and creativity is realised for the benefit of the economy and society.
Our
Corporate Plan (1.14Mb) then sets out in more detail what we plan to do in the coming year.
Our Annual Report lets you know what we have done in the past year.
As an Executive Agency of the BIS we are directed and controlled by corporate governance rules to ensure that we, supply public services of the highest quality, share good ideas, control costs and above all deliver what we are supposed to.
To ensure that we act within these rules Ministers appoint independent members to sit on a Steering Board. This Steering Board has no executive functions; its role is to advise Ministers, through our Director General, on the strategies that we must adopt.
The Steering Board has established an Audit Committee to assist and advise it on risk, control, governance and associated issues. The Committee acts in a non-executive capacity.
Innovation Infrastructure Partners
We
are working with BIS and our Innovation Infrastructure Partners to implement the recommendations in
the BIS 'Innovation Infrastructure Report - Working towards an Innovation System' (May 2010).
Further information on who our Innovation Infrastructure partners are and details of the Report is available
from the BIS website .