GovWire

Retained EU Law (REUL) and intellectual property

The act

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act (the Act) received Royal Assent on 29 June 2023.The aim of the Act is to make it easier to amend, repeal or replace EU law retained on the UK statute book to reduce regulatory burdens and costs on UK businesses. The Act sets out a Schedule which defines what REUL is to be sunset at the end of 2023. It also ends the special status ofREULin the UK by the end of 2023 and will make it easier for UK courts to depart from retained EU case law.

The government has committed to maintaining compliance with all our international obligations (including those contained within the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Withdrawal Agreement, and other international treaties).

IP related Law

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) identified 85 pieces of REUL related Intellectual property (IP) legislation.Seven pieces of IP legislation are included in the revocation schedule which are either inoperable, superseded by other domestic legislation or are no longer relevant.Revoking these will not alter the policy effect of IP law.

The IPO approach to REUL

The UKs IP framework is consistently ranked as one of the best in the world, with our strongIPrights underpinning many science, innovation, and business success stories. The UK system isaligned internationally on many aspects ofIP, which supports international trade.That is why we will maintain current policy positions but introduce some limited technical reforms which are in accordance with the aims of the Act.

We will implement these changes using the powers under the Act through statutory instruments, which have been laid in draft subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, meaning that they will be debated in Parliament before it is approved. This should happen by the end of the year.

The Design Right, Artists Resale Right and Copyright (Amendment) Regulations 2023 look to implement some technical changes to IP REUL, amending provisions in four pieces of legislation mainly to make them more relevant to a UK context. These changes include:

• reducing the regulatory burden on Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) which qualify as small companies under UK company law by exempting them from the requirement to audit accounting information in their Annual Transparency Reports. The amendments also redefine other exemptions which apply to CMOs that qualify as a micro-entity under UK company law. This will ensure greater alignment with the domestic company law regime;??

• replacing references to Euros in the Artists Resale Right Regulations to ensure that royalty payment calculations will be made in pounds sterling. This will reduce regulatory burdens and costs on UK businesses and provide greater business certainty by removing exchange rate fluctuations. These provisions will come into force on 1 April 2024 to allow industry time to prepare and adapt to the change;

• replacing an address for service in the European Economic Area (EEA) to one in the UK for proceedings in the Copyright Tribunal; and

• enabling new members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to receive protection in the UK for designs that are semiconductor topographies without needing to introduce further legislation to specifically name them

The Intellectual Property (Exhaustion of Rights) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 have been introduced to restate some elements of EU directly effective rights related to exhaustion of intellectual property rights.This will maintain the existing regime while the government makes a decision on the UKs future exhaustion regime.

Interpretive effects of EU law

One of the Acts main principles is to end the special status of REUL by removing interpretive effects including EU directly effective rights, the principle of supremacy of EU law and general principles of EU law at the end of the year.

The Act provides powers to reproduce or codify effects which are similar to those interpretive effects being removed, meaning case law can be codified into legislative provisions to maintain its policy effects if appropriate.

The IPO will not be proactively codifying case law but will be monitoring for any signs of divergence or changes in legal certainty within the framework.The Act contains powers which are available to address any issues which arise up to June 2026.