Intellectual Property and Cyber Security issues considered in UK Government White Paper on the future UK-EU relationship

The UK Government's White Paper detailing its proposal for the future relationship between the UK and the EU (published on 12 July 2018) includes a limited number of proposals relating to intellectual property and cyber security as follows:

• The UK intends to explore staying in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and Unitary Patent system post-Brexit. The UK will work with the member states that have signed up to the UPC Agreement to ensure that the UPC Agreement can continue on a firm legal basis;
• Arrangements on future co-operation on intellectual property are recognised as important to provide confidence and security to rights holders operating in and between the UK and the EU;
• The UK and EU will need to continue to co-operate on cyber security to counter cyber threats;
• The UK will establish its own Geographical Indications (GIs) scheme to provide continuous protection for UK GIs in the UK and protection for new GIs applied for by UK and non-UK applicants

UPC and Unitary Patent

Opinions vary on the likelihood of whether the UK could continue as part of the UPC and Unitary patent system post-Brexit. The Foreword to the White Paper by the Prime Minister states that the proposals in the White Paper would end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK. It is not clear whether the UK would nevertheless accept the role of the European Court of Justice in respect of references from the UPC on matters of European law.

Future Co-operation on intellectual property

The draft withdrawal agreement of 19 March 2018 (as supplemented by the joint statement on 19 June 2018) sets out the text (highlighted in green in the draft) agreed between the Commission and UK at negotiator level, in relation to the replacement of EU-wide rights with equivalent UK rights, which may indicate that there will be substantive future co-operation.

Cyber Security

It is proposed that here will be close collaboration between the UK and the Network and Information Security (NIS) Cooperation Group, Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) Network (created under the NIS directive) and the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA). While the UK's desire to remain involved in the EU cyber security apparatus is welcome, no details of the legal mechanisms by which this will be achieved are provided at this stage.

Geographic Indications

The provisions in the draft withdrawal agreement relating to GIs have not yet been agreed at negotiator level. However, the White Paper states that the UK wants equivalence arrangements on a broad range of food policy rules, including GIs, noting that GIs provide legal protection against imitation and misrepresentations about quality or geographical origin for agri-food products that have a strong traditional or cultural connection to a particular geographical area. The UK will establish its own GI scheme consistent with (and going beyond) the provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). The new scheme is to provide a clear and simple set of rules on GIs and continuous protection in the UK for UK GIs notwithstanding exit from the EU. The scheme will be open to new applications from both UK and non-UK applicants.

For further analysis of the impact of Brexit on IP rights and how to moderate this, see the IP section of the HSF Brexit Legal Guide in the Brexit hub of our website (https://www.herbertsmithfreehills.com/latest-thinking/hubs/brexit).

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