Cherrie Stewart, Chartered Trade Mark Attorney in Ansons, part of the M&D group, has recently contributed an insightful article to the CITMA Review on the current situation of Intellectual Property in Northern Ireland. With the Northern Irish Protocol now in place following the implementation of Brexit, the implications for IP have become ever more complex.
Cherrie is now part of the CITMA Review council and will be contributing further articles throughout the year and we look forward to sharing them with you.
We share an excerpt of Cherrie’s article below along with a link for you to access the full article.
The outcome of the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum created a unique problem for Northern Ireland (NI) – one that required a novel solution.
NI is the only part of the UK that has a land border with the EU. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which helped bring an end to the Troubles in NI, stipulated that there was to be no hard border on the island of Ireland. The UK’s decision to leave the EU introduced a conflict here, since this requirement clashed with the EU’s need to ensure the integrity of its single market for goods by having proper checks on its borders.
The tension between these diametrically opposed requirements resulted in the agreement of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland (the Protocol), which, in its opening statements, “acknowledges the need for this Protocol to be implemented so as to maintain the necessary conditions for continued North-South co-operation, including for possible new arrangements in accordance with the 1998 Agreement”.