Will Your Business be better In Or Out Of The EU

From today's Financial times

 

What Brexit means for trade: http://on.ft.com/24wwaqK

The closing quote by pro-Brexit Patrick Minford is interesting: “it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing, leaving mainly industries such as design, marketing and high-tech. But this shouldn’t scare us.” It epitomises the long-started and still-ongoing shift from a manufacturing, goods-led economy to a knowledge-based, service-led economy, as the laudable economic paradigm which it is indeed (for 1st world economies, that is).

 

The problem inherent to the above, is that successful monetizing of the output of the above globally, necessarily includes IP protection/registration programmes...when a Brexit would very severely undermine the domestic capacity to provide specialist services associated with international IP protection/registration programmes, as I posted earlier.

 

And no more so than in relation to the protection of designs since, following a Brexit, UK IP professionals would lose their right of audience at the EUIPO (so be unable to file EU design applications anymore) and at WIPO under the Hague Agreement (so be unable to file international design applications anymore): UK designers would have to rely on non-UK EU IP professionals instead.

 

Now, some of them are good, particularly in France and Germany...but few if any are better than British ones, still to this day.

Edited May 6, 2016 by L00b

Interesting article from the Independent: How Brexit will affect British tourism

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/brexit-british-tourism-impact-eu-referendum-a7066371.html

In connection with my earlier IP-related posts in here, our Chartered Institute has uploaded the video of their 20 May Brexit symposium on YouTube.

 

I would draw attention to

 

the first presentation (starts at 06:30) by Clive Thorne (solicitor, non-IP specialist, pro-Brexit) about the fundamental legal ('constitutional') implications of Brexit, which I would deem of interest to everyone on both sides of the debate,

 

the second presentation (starts at 20:27) by David Stone (IP specialist, 'undeclared' pro-Remain) who confirms independently everything that I posted above, and

 

the last presentation (starts at 53:08 ) by Caroline Warren (IP specialist, pro-Remain) about the broader/peripheral implications of Brexit on a practical level (competition law, R&D, etc.).

 

The 3rd and 4th presentations (respectively about the UPC and the IP/biotech field) are much more 'specialised' in topic, so I don't recommend them to lay readers. Although the 3rd again confirms independently everything that I posted above about the UPC, and gives some insight about the weight which the UK currently swings in intellectual property matters in the EU.

Edited June 12, 2016 by L00b

Pharma companies have expressed concerns Brexit will harm research & bringing quality meds to market