Privacy Statement
Our Privacy Policy
We are subject to the Privacy Act 1988, and to the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) contained in that Act. The IPPs set out how Australian Government Agencies should handle personal information and how people can access records containing their personal information.
Our privacy policy explains the various circumstances in which we are authorised under the IP legislation to collect, use, store and disclose your personal information. The IP legislation we administer requires us to publish certain personal information about applicant for IP rights and others.
If you are concerned to keep your residential address private, please do not provide it to us. You may use your PO Box as your address for legal service and for correspondence.
You should read the privacy policy if you are:
- an applicant for an IP right
- an owner of an IP right
- an attorney or agent for an applicant or owner
- an individual whose personal information may be given to or held by us
- a contractor, consultant, supplier or vendor of goods or services to us
- a person seeking employment with us.
Privacy Policy PDF [374KB]
Privacy Policy RTF [852KB]
Personal Information Digest
Our personal information handling practices are detailed in our Personal Information Digest (PID) report published annually on the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. This report explains the authority we have for collecting and disclosing personal information under the IP legislation we administer. It also explains the various classes of personal information we collect or hold, what they are used for and to whom, and how, they may be disclosed.
Enquiries and contact points
General enquiries about our compliance with the IPPs can be made to the Privacy Contact Officer.
Telephone: 1300 65 10 10
Email: assist@ipaustralia.gov.au
Post:
Privacy Contact Officer
Business Development & Strategy Group
IP Australia
PO Box 200
Woden ACT 2606
Privacy-related complaints
Any complaints about our personal information handling practices can be sent to us. You may use our customer feedback form, or any of our other contact points, to make a privacy-related complaint.
If you are not satisfied with our response to your privacy-related complaint, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Website Privacy Information
Clickstream data
Clickstreams are the paths a user takes when navigating a web page or the Internet in general.
When you visit our website, our Internet Service Provider makes a record of your visit and logs the following information for statistical purposes - the user's server address, the user's top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk and so on), the date and time of visit to the site, the pages accessed and documents downloaded, the previous site visited, and the type of browser used.
We examine this information to determine the traffic through the server as well as access levels to specific pages. In order to deliver better services, we also perform statistical analysis to establish priorities and allocate resources. No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities except, in the unlikely event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the Internet Service Provider's logs. The statistics and log files may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way necessary to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the information we supply.
Clicktales
This site uses ClickTale web analytics service. ClickTale may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, scrolling activity as well as any text you type in this website. ClickTale does not collect personally identifiable information that you do not voluntarily enter in this website. ClickTale does not track your browsing habits across web sites which do not use ClickTale services. For more information see ClickTale's Privacy Policy for information by the ClickTale Web Analytics Service. We are using the information collected by ClickTale service to retrieve analytics that will help us improve our website. We do not retain this information for any other purpose. You can choose to disable the Service at http://www.clicktale.net/disable.html.
Cookies
A cookie is a short piece of data which is sent from a web server to a web browser on the user's machine when the browser visits the server's site. The cookie is stored on the user's machine, but it is not an executable program and cannot do anything to your machine.
Whenever a web browser requests a file from the same web server that sent the cookie, the browser sends a copy of that cookie back to the server along with the request. In this way, the server knows you have visited before and can co-ordinate your access to different pages on its web site. A server cannot find out a name or e-mail address, or anything about a user's computer, by using cookies.
We use cookies to obtain session details for access to parts of our sites. Cookies are essential in providing a seamless access to our online databases. We do not store or collect cookie information.
We use Survey Monkey, a third party software supplier, to administer online surveys. These surveys use third party cookies; the information collected by the cookies is not capable of identifying you and is only used to ensure our surveys run effectively. We will only use the information collected from the surveys for statistical and maintenance purposes. For more information, check out Survey Monkey's privacy policy.
We also use Google Analytics to collect information about visitors to our website. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies and JavaScript code to collect this information. It anonymously tracks how our visitors interact with this website, including where they came from, what they did on the site including such things as newsletter registration. It does not track any application processes or procedures from our eServices section.
E-mail addresses
If you subscribe to one of our opt-in mailing lists we will only use your email address for the purpose for which you have provided it. In particular we will not add it to a mailing list unless you request that this be done.
Links to external websites
Our website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the content and privacy practices of other websites. We encourage you to examine each website’s Privacy Policy.
Links
Last Updated: 17/12/2012
