Our Work

The need for the Federation

All industrial and commercial companies use or are affected by intellectual property rights and competition law. The work of the Federation is to ensure that proper rights are available, that these can be secured in a straightforward and efficient way and can be litigated without undue complexity and expense. The Federation is very active in pursuing these needs and is of value to all companies, of whatever size, which own IPRs.


The Federation’s aim is to bring about improvements to intellectual property rights system throughout the world, to the advantage not only to industry, but in advancement of economic development generally.

  • The Federation initiates proposals and follows all developments at national, European and international levels across all fields of intellectual property;
  • It makes authoritative submissions to legislators, policy makers, regulatory authorities, non-governmental organisations and national and international groups to influence legislation;
  • The Federation’s active interest and participatory role in the intellectual property issues which could affect industry ensure that its members have a broadly-based representative platform in which to express their collective concerns and opinions.

Ensuring Dialogue, Debate and Representation

  • The IP Federation makes representations to European and national governments on patents, trade marks, designs, industrial copyright, digital rights management (DRM) and the database right.
  • The Federation is represented on bodies which are consulted by the European Patent Office, the EUIPO and the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) (including the Trade Marks Registry).
  • Within the Federation itself, members are regularly consulted as to their views and opinions and encouraged to debate and explore issues of practice and policy. It is only after consensus is achieved that the relevant external bodies are informed of the collective views of industry via the Federation.
  • Since its inception as a trade association, its close relationship with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) permits it to provide professional input on intellectual property matters to the CBI, as well as representing it in meetings of the European employers’ association, BusinessEurope, concerning intellectual property.