On 14 November the European Commission and the United Kingdom’s negotiators have reached a Draft agreement on the Withdrawal Agreement of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community.
The Draft Agreement (Title IV, intellectual property / article 54.2.) provides for the continued protection of registered EU GIs in the United Kingdom and of UK GIs in the EU. The UK will guarantee at least the same level of protection currently available within the EU for the existing stock of GIs (without re-examination). This protection will be enforced through domestic UK legislation. EU-approved GIs from the UK remain unaffected within the EU. The approval of the all Draft Agreement by the UK Parliament (vote scheduled at the beginning of December), is expected to be problematic.
oriGIn – which has been quite active over the last months to push Brexit negotiators to preserve the existing level of GIs protection in the UK (Brexit: oriGIn pushes for legal certainty for GIs beneficiaries and consumers & Brexit negotiations: oriGIn EU renews its call for legal certainty for GIs ) welcomes the Draft Agreement. oriGIn has also participated in the consultation on establishing UK Geographical Indications (GI) schemes after exit
This summary has been extracted from an “oriGIn Alert”, which is a service reserved exclusively to oriGIn members. Click here to join oriGIn
For more information about bilateral and plurilateral agreements covering GIs see the concerning category in the section Policy and Advocacy
