Feasibility of an IPO-led FRAND Opinion Service

The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) published an open call for evidence on October 20, 2026, seeking views on the feasibility and potential design of an IPO-led FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) Opinion Service. The exercise follows the government's response to its standard essential patents (SEPs) consultation, published earlier in October, in which it announced it would engage with stakeholders on such a service.

The proposed service would help businesses during licensing negotiations by providing an independent assessment of whether a proposed SEP licence offer falls within a plausible FRAND range. The government is particularly interested in whether a service could reduce licensing frictions and improve access to dispute resolution, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises and less experienced participants in the SEP ecosystem.

The call for evidence is open to anyone with an interest in the service, and responses can be submitted online or by email to Seps@ipo.gov.uk. It closes at 11:59pm on December 15, 2026. The IPO emphasizes that it wants evidence on whether, and how, a service could be taken forward, signaling that both the principle and the operational design remain open questions.

The initiative is one of the surviving strands of the UK's SEP reform package: in its consultation response, the government set aside the proposed Rate Determination Track and an IPO essentiality-checking service, left the injunction framework unchanged, and committed instead to voluntary transparency measures and exploration of early, court-anchored FRAND determination. A non-binding IPO opinion service would complement that approach by giving SMEs a low-cost reference point in negotiations without adding regulatory burden on SEP owners.

Original Link: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/feasibility-of-an-ipo-led-frand-opinion-service