GovWire

Retained EU Law (REUL) and intellectual property

The Act

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act (the Act) makes it easier to amend, repeal or replace EU law retained on the UK statute book to reduce regulatory burdens and costs on UK businesses. It sets out a Schedule which defines pieces of REUL that were revoked at the end of 2023. It also ended the special status of REUL in the UK at the end of 2023 and will make it easier for UK courts to depart from retained case law.

As a result of these changes, this category of law is now known as assimilated law and is subject to domestic principles of interpretation.

The UK 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) in making any changes to assimilated law.

IP Law

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) identified 86 pieces of REUL-related Intellectual property (IP) legislation.Seven pieces of IP legislation were included in the revocation schedule which were either inoperable, superseded by other domestic legislation or were no longer relevant.Revoking these have not altered the policy effect of IP law.

The IPO approach to REUL

The UKsIPframework 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 have maintained current policy positions but introduced two statutory instruments using powers under the Act to make some limited technical reforms.

The Design Right, Artists Resale Right and Copyright (Amendment) Regulations 2023 amends provisions in 4 separate pieces of IP legislation, primarily to better align certain aspects of the UKs IP framework with the aims of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023:

• 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

All amendments in these regulations will come into force on 1 January 2024 with the exception of those related to the Artists Resale Right which will come into force on 1 April 2024.

The Intellectual Property (Exhaustion of Rights) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 restate certain retained EU law derived from saved directly effective rights related to the exhaustion of intellectual property rights before 31 December 2023. These Regulations maintain the operation of our existing exhaustion regime while the government is taking a decision on what the UKs future exhaustion regime should be.

Interpretive effects of EU law

One of the Acts main objectives was 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, which took place at the end of 2023.

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

The IPO has not proactively codified 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.