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IP Insights - February 2020

Brexit Impact on IP? - Not So Much

By: Barry Bretschneider

As explained by our London correspondent Dr. Tom Brand in the attached briefing, Brexit has much less impact on IP than one might think (except perhaps in data rights). 

In summary, here is the Brexit impact:

National UK Patents – None
European Patents – None (the EPO is not an EU institution)
Unified Patent Court – UK has announced it won’t be a part (review by European Court of Justice incompatible with Brexit, for example)
National UK Trademarks – None
Madrid Protocol Trademarks – None
EU Trademarks – Will automatically be converted to UK registrations at end of transition period
Copyrights – Likely divergence, especially where copyright and the Internet intersect.  The UK has much to dislike about EU copyright policy and directives.
Data Rights – “We don’t know”.  Nothing changes until December 31, 2020, the end of the transition period.  After that, the best guess is that the UK will continue to mirror EU law at least for a while, perhaps longer than a while, after the end of the transition period.