Managing your inbox and cases

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Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand

Managing your inbox and cases

Your Inbox gives you fast access to your cases, and is the central point from which you manage your intellectual property.

Once you've logged into our case management facility, you'll go straight to your Inbox. The screen is split into the following three areas.

Tasks

As you move through the process of applying for and maintaining an IP case, at times you'll be required to submit additional information to complete your application. For example, if:

  • you need to respond to an examination report, or
  • your application was not complete and you need to resubmit. 

We'll issue a Task to you each time there is something you need to do to progress your application.

Your unread Tasks will appear in bold, while any read Tasks will appear in non-bold text as long as they have not yet been completed.

To respond to a task, click the Task title. The content of the task will explain what your next steps should be. 

Task Due Date

Each task has a Task Due Date. If you don't submit a response to the Task it will be removed from your Task list once that date has passed. Usually this means you can no longer pursue your application. 

Search Tasks

If you have a lot of Tasks and wish to search for Tasks within your Inbox, select Search Tasks and you will be presented with a range of search criteria. These search settings are automatically saved, so don’t forget to clear these when searching again, or when reverting to your original Task list or Inbox.

Your Administrator has access to all tasks for your organisation, and can quickly identify which user is in charge for a particular case. If you can’t see a task that should belong to you, contact your Administrator to delegate the case to you. 

Discussions

As you move through the process of applying for and maintaining intellectual property, you’ll receive electronic communications from us.

Each formal communication will be sent in the form of a Discussion, and you'll always receive an email notification when you have a new Discussion.

Examples of Discussions include:

  • Notification that your application was submitted. 
  • Notification that your Trade Mark was registered (with Registration Certificate and letter attached). 
  • Notification that you have completed a ‘Task’ in your Inbox. 

To read the content of a Discussion, select the title. Discussions may have documents attached.

A Discussions tab is also available on the case data view allowing you to see discussions on specific cases. 

Read/unread

Your Discussions will show as 'Read' or 'Unread' much like email. Only unread Discussions will appear in your Inbox by default, although you can search for any read Discussions. You can choose to mark discussions as Read or Unread.

Status

A Discussion will have either a Closed or Open status. Most Discussions have a Closed status, and notify you about activity on your case.

Search Discussions

You can search for Discussions within your inbox. Select Search Discussions and you will be presented with a range of search criteria. These search settings are automatically saved, so don’t forget to clear these when searching again, or when reverting to your original Discussions list or Inbox.

Request copies

To request copies of your Discussions for your records, select Get PDF Discussion Report and enter your email address.

Navigation Bar

The left hand side of your Inbox is the navigation bar, which has been organised into the following sections:

My Account

This section contains information about yourself and the organisation (default client) that is linked to you. This is where you can maintain your account details and maintain your client records.

You can access the following functions:

  • My Profile
    • For users, you can modify your contact details such as email or phone number here. 
    • For organisations, you can add new users and delegate cases here. 
  • My Case Portfolio
    • This is where you can search for all cases that belong to your organisation. This is a great way to keep track of and oversee your organisation’s cases. 
  • My Subscriptions
    • This is a service where you can watch for any changes to an individual case or a collection of cases, to classes, and to specifications.
    • You can have up to 5 subscriptions at any time, and watch up to 5 classes or 1,000 cases per subscription.
    • An email will be sent to notify you of any changes, and you will be able to view your subscriptions results via the My Notification screen.
  • My Notifications
    • This is where you can view your Subscriptions results.
  • Maintain Client
    • This is where you or other authorised parties can maintain client record details such as legal name and addresses, which will reflect across their whole IP portfolio.
  • Search Fees
    • This is where you can search for fees, invoices, or payments made by your organisation. You can search by various attributes such as IP case number, email address or client name. If you wish to print out a copy of the invoice, you can do so by selecting the fee details in the Invoices section.
  • Change Client Reference
    • This is where you can change your cases’ client references. Search and select the case for which you wish to update the client reference. The update will take place immediately once you select Submit. No history or notification is created for this change.

Trade mark

In this section you can search, apply for a trade mark, apply for International Registration, maintain or renew a trade mark application.

Patent

In this section you can search, apply for a patent, maintain or renew a patent application.

Design

In this section you can search, apply for a design, maintain or renew a design application.

Plant Variety Rights

In this section you can search, apply for a PVR, maintain or renew a PVR application.

Proceedings

In this section you can lodge an opposition application, maintain your proceeding case or file proceeding documents.

Information requests

In this section you can interact with the register as follows:

  • View published information - Online Journal
    • We advertise information at various stages in the lifecycle of an IP. You can search and view that information here. 
    • The Journal is published once a month and groups together all events that need to be advertised since the previous publication. Opposition periods begin from the publication date of the Journal.
    • View the expected publication dates of the Journal.
    • Select Case Type to search by IP type. You can also:
      • Search by Journal Section within a selected Published period of your choice.
      • Send the Result List to any email address.
  • Request Certified IP Document
    • You may request a copy of a document from your case file with an IPONZ validation code on it. This will make that document public, and allow you to give the code to a third party so they can see it online.
    • You must search for a specific case number, then you will be able to request for a certified copy of a document for that case.
    • You may request for either of the following documents, which will be watermarked with your IPONZ validation code:
      • IP Certificate (Register Extract) - this is a summary of all public information relating to your selected case.
      • Certified document - this is a copy of a single document of your choice from your selected case. Not all documents will be publicly available for all cases.
      Some jurisdictions will not accept electronic certified copies of documents. In these cases, you may request for physical certified copies of your documents from IPONZ. These requests are subject to review and approval.

      To request for a physical certified copy of the document, send a formal request to mail@iponz.govt.nz. This request should contain the following information:
      • The name, communication address and contact information of the requestor;
      • The IP case number;
      • The name or nature of the documents;
      • The reason for the request;
      • The country or region to which the documents will be sent, if applicable.
      Physical copies of documents released in this way will be sent to the given communication address via standard mail.
  • Validate Certified IP Document
    • You may enter a validation code here to view that certified document from the IPONZ register. If your code is valid, you will be provided access to a non-watermarked version of that document.
  • Request information
    • You may make Official Information Act requests on intellectual property information here. If the information is already publicly available via our site your request will be declined, so please ensure you search for the information first.
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