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Patent and trade mark attorneys

Regulated by Intellectual Property Regulation Board.

Protected title

Patent attorney; trade mark attorney

Legal basis

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ss.275, 276 and 282

Statutory basis

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ss.275, 276, 282; Legal Services Act 2007 sch.4

Collected here

3,924 entries, and 260 regulated firms

Register

IPReg’s own register

How somebody becomes one

A science or other degree, then the Foundation and Final examinations of the Patent Examination Board or CITMA/Queen Mary courses, with two years' supervised practice before registration. An IP Litigation Certificate and a Higher Courts Litigation Certificate are separate awards on top.

How to become a patent or trade mark attorney — the full route, what it costs, and how many people joined the register in each of the last ten years.

What they may lawfully do

Patent and trade mark attorneys may carry on 4 reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007.

• exercise of a right of audience — Appearing before a court to argue a case.
• conduct of litigation — Issuing, prosecuting or defending proceedings, and the formal steps in them.
• reserved instrument activities — Preparing instruments of transfer or charge over land and lodging documents at HM Land Registry.
• administration of oaths — Administering an oath or taking an affidavit.

What the IPReg says

Figure	Source	Provenance
3,690 registrants at 1 April 2025 -- 2,631 patent, 859 trade mark, 200 on both registers IPReg core metrics, as recorded in the estate's research	IPReg	secondary
about 94 net new registrants a year	IPReg	secondary

“Secondary” means the figure was recorded from somewhere other than the body’s own page and has not been checked against it. It is marked because a table is exactly the format that makes an unchecked number look like a measured one.

In law, and in Parliament

74 documents on legislation.gov.uk mention this profession, 15 of them Acts, the oldest from 1949. Hansard records 327 contributions mentioning it, across 3 whole debates.

Every Act and instrument that mentions them, what was said in Parliament, and what each search phrase catches by mistake — or the same for every profession here.

What the annual reports say

This site has 3,924 entries from the public register. The IPReg’s own latest published figure is 3,809 — attorneys on ipreg's registers, 2025 — a difference of +115.

Both are the whole register; the dates differ by nine months, over which IPReg's own reports show the register growing by about a hundred a year. Neither number is wrong: they count different things on different days, and nobody publishing either one says which. Annual Report 2025.

How the regulator itself is rated. The Legal Services Board oversees every approved regulator and rates each one against three standards. In 2025 it rated the Intellectual Property Regulation Board: well-led — sufficient; effective approach to regulation — partial; operational delivery — sufficient. The assessment, and every regulator’s rating side by side.

What regulation costs. In 2024 the regulator’s income was £921,708 and it regulated 3,695 people — £249 a head. Attorneys' practice fees only. IPReg charges firms as well, and that income is not in this figure, so the true cost per attorney is higher. Neither figure is published beside the other; both are the regulator’s own. The same sum for every profession here.

Attorneys on IPReg's registers

Admissions to the attorney register

IPReg income from attorneys' practice fees

IPReg income from firms' practice fees

Firms on IPReg's registers

Read from the regulator’s own annual reports and core metrics. A gap in a run means the document that would carry it is not on the regulator’s site, not that the figure is zero. All 157 reports, with the sentence each figure came from.