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How to become a patent or trade mark attorney
The most graduate-dependent of these professions, and the one most concentrated in large firms.
Legal basis. The registers of patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys are kept under sections 275, 276 and 282 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The route
- A degree, usually in science or engineering for patent work. — not verified against the regulator’s own page
- Foundation and advanced professional examinations. — not verified against the regulator’s own page
- A period of supervised practice before registration. — not verified against the regulator’s own page
- Optionally, an IP Litigation Certificate: 91% of the attorneys on the register hold one.
How many actually get in
3,918 people on the current register have a date for when they registered with IPReg, the earliest in 1964. No regulator publishes this; it is counted from the register itself.
| Year | Joined | |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 139 | |
| 2016 | 109 | |
| 2017 | 128 | |
| 2018 | 167 | |
| 2019 | 162 | |
| 2020 | 108 | |
| 2021 | 230 | |
| 2022 | 168 | |
| 2023 | 211 | |
| 2024 | 167 | |
| 2025 | 197 | |
| 2026 | 178 |
The date IPReg records against the registration. An attorney on both registers is counted once, at the earlier.
What the regulator reports
The regulator publishes its own admissions figure, which is not the same measurement as the one above: it counts everyone admitted in the year, while the count above can only see those still on the register today. The regulator’s is therefore the larger of the two, and the gap between them is the attrition since.
Admissions to the attorney register
| Year | people | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 173 | Annual Report 2019 “In 2019, there were 173 admissions to the attorney register, 118 of these were patent attorneys (including one admission from a registrant already on the trade mark…” |
| 2020 | 116 | Annual Report 2020 “In 2020, there were 116 admissions to the attorney register, 70 of these were patent attorneys and 46 were trade mark attorneys.” |
| 2021 | 258 | Annual Report 2021 “3.4.2 In 2021, there were 258 admissions to the attorney register, 193 of these were patent attorneys and 47 were trade mark attorneys.” |
| 2022 | 169 | Annual Report 2022 “169 admissions to the register in 2022” |
| 2023 | 225 | Annual Report 2023 “No claims Individuals – attorneys have ever been made on the compensation fund In 2023, there were 225 admissions to the registers.” |
| 2025 | 200 | Annual Report 2025 “…Register Additionally, 19 new firms were admitted to the registers (+6 on 2024), 15 were registered bodies There were 200 individuals admitted to the (a firm owned by registered attorneys or other registers (+27 on 2024).” |
Read from the regulator’s own published reports — see what the regulators report about themselves.
What the work pays
By occupation code, not by profession — for most of these professions those are not the same thing. See what they earn for why.
| Occupation | Median |
|---|---|
| Legal professionals n.e.c. | £33,822 |
| Business associate professionals n.e.c. | £33,035 |
Where to apply
IPReg’s own page. This site is not the regulator and cannot admit anybody to anything; everything above is a summary of what they publish, and where the two differ they are right.
Where these facts come from
- primary — read from the regulator's own page on the date shown
- statute — the Act or regulations named, which can be checked against legislation.gov.uk
- measured — computed from the register snapshots this site holds
- secondary — recorded from a source other than the regulator's own page and not verified against it
Read from the regulators’ pages on 2026-09-28.