The Conservative party achieved an overall majority in the House of Commons following the UK general election held on Thursday 12th December. Following the election result, a vote took place on Friday 20th December on the EU withdrawal agreement bill, which is the legislation required to progress the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.  The vote was passed by 358 votes to 234 and it is now likely that the UK will leave the EU by the end of January 2020 and enter an implementation period, which will not end, at the earliest, until 31st December 2020. During the implementation period, the UK will continue to apply EU law. We will provide further updates as the situation develops.

Implications for Intellectual Property

The European Patent Office (EPO) is not an EU institution, so Brexit will have no effect on the current patent system.  Regardless of the outcome of the Brexit process, patent applications filed by Carpmaels & Ransford at the EPO will still cover the UK (via conventional national validation), and they will be litigated in the UK national courts as usual. The European Patent Convention will continue to be part of UK law, and our European patent attorneys will continue to act in the usual way in all matters before the EPO.

However, EU Trade Marks and Community Designs are administered through the EUIPO, which is an EU institution. As a result, EU Trade Marks and Community Designs will be affected by Brexit. Further information on the position of intellectual property post-Brexit can be found on our Brexit website pages. However, as a European IP firm, we are set up to continue to represent our clients in all of their European IP matters regardless of the outcome of Brexit. You will continue to receive the high levels of service and client care which you have come to expect.

Further resources can be found on the Brexit pages of our website.