Every Friday at 10am, our drop-in sessions give you the opportunity to join with other industry colleagues and discuss the issues affecting you and your business.
The issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) affects manufacturers, distributors and retailers, and it’s another area in which Brexit is having an impact on legislation, with a Government consultation on the matter ending on 31st August 2021.
The consultation specifically pertains to the exhaustion of Intellectual Property Rights, ie. the point at which the holder of the IPRs for a particular product or design no longer has control over the sourcing and supply of that product. Our membership of the EU meant that once a product was placed on the market anywhere in the EU/EEA, UK retailers could legally source products from either the official UK distributor or from anywhere else in the EU. We have maintained that voluntarily since our final exit from the EU in January, so a UK business can still import any product that has already been placed on the EU market from any source. The rest of the EU hasn’t, so it only works one way.
The Government is consulting on 4 possible options for UK legislation going forward, and we’d like to use this week’s Friday Drop-in Session to outline and discuss these options so that we can find out which is the preferred option for all sides of our industry.
To be your voice we need to hear your views and about the opportunities and challenges you see in the available options, so we warmly encourage your participation in this discussion. If you would like to read the consultation ahead of our drop-in on Friday you can find it here.
These Zoom sessions are really informal and open to any business operating across the MI sector.
If you would like to join the session taking place this Friday at 10am, please contact matt@mia.org.uk
