NIPC Law

Author dun_deagh   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikipedia Scotland Jane Lambert Shortly before the Scottish independence referendum, I wrote  What would an independent Scottish government do about Intellectual Property?   on 10 Sept 2014 and  More on Scotland and Intellectual Property   on 13 Sept 2014.  As Scotland approaches elections in which the question of secession from the United Kingdom will again be an issue, it is now appropriate to reconsider what should be the intellectual property policy of a separate Scotland. In 2014 the section on intellectual property in the Scottish government's white paper Scotland's Future  consisting of 4 short paragraphs of which only the first was of any relevance.  I was not particularly impressed with it and I said so at the time.  Having said that, credit should be given to the Scottish government for at least publishing a white paper on independence because there was nothing like that on the ...

Just before the Scottish referendum I wrote a couple of articles on the SNP's proposals for intellectual property in a separate Scotland ( What would an independent Scottish government do about Intellectual Property?   10 Sept 2014 and  More on Scotland and Intellectual Property   13 Sept 2014). Today I shall attempt a similar exercise in respect of Brexit. What would not change Were we to withdraw from the European Union we would probably remain a member of the World Trade Organization  and bound by TRIPS ( Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) . Art 2 (1) of TRIPS requires WTO members to comply with Articles 1 through 12, and Article 19, of the Paris Convention . There is no reason why we should not remain party to the Berne , Rome  and other multilateral agreements to which we are party including the European Patent Convention . But what would However, we would miss out on the unitary patent and the Unifie...

Whitehall Photo T. B. Murray Source Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Whatever happens on 23 June 2016 HMG will have to make rules to implement the  Agreement on a Unified Patent Court  in the United Kingdom. The reason I say that is that the Agreement comes into force after 13 countries, including France, Germany and the UK, ratify the Agreement. Nine countries including France have already done so (see the European Council's website ).  Parliament has enacted primary legislation to enable the Secretary of State to give effect to the Agreement in the UK by order in council (see  S,17 of the Intellectual Property Act 2014  inserting a new s.88A and s.88B into the  Patents Act 1977 ). As it would take time to negotiate an exit agreement under art 50 (2) of the Treaty on European Union  the Agreement will almost certainly come into force while the UK is still an EU member. There would have to be some sort of s...