Policy Roundtable on Exhaustion of Intellectual Property Rights

On: Tuesday 29 June 2021 from 9.30am – 10.30am

Via: Video Conference

For: Members & Associate Members only

The UK government has launched a consultation to collect views on the UK’s future regime for exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights and we would like to explore with Members whether there is a common position around which we might construct a formal submission from British Screen Forum. The meeting with be chaired by John Enser (Partner, CMS-CMNO) and attended by our independent copyright consultant, Guido Westkamp. All Members and Associate Members are welcome to attend. Given the specialist nature of the issue we are encouraging Members to attend with a relevant colleague (or to send a relevant colleague in their place) where appropriate.

As the consultation notes, the question of what our future exhaustion regime should be is an important one because it will govern future rules on parallel trade.  Parallel trade is the cross-border movement of goods that have already been placed on the market in a specific geographic territory and any changes to the regime may impact a wide range of sectors where there is parallel trade of physical goods which are protected by copyright, design rights, patents and/or trade marks. The issue has arisen as a result of the fact that the UK has left the European Union and the consultation sets out options for the UK’s future exhaustion regime. In short, there are three options: National, regional (EU) and international exhaustion. Our (rebuttable) assumption at this stage is that Members will – above all – want to avoid a regime based on ‘international’ exhaustion, but we would like to test this assumption, identify supporting arguments and evidence, and also explore whether Members might also share a view on the merits of ‘national’ versus ‘regional’ exhaustion.

Following the discussion at this Policy Roundtable, we will take a view as to whether to make a submission to the consultation. Members will, of course, have the opportunity to comment on any such submission before it is finalised.

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