UK rights of representation debated in Parliament
Ongoing issues for UK business caused by current rules on rights of representation before the UK IPO were debated in the House of Commons.
Chartered Trade Mark Attorneys and CITMA were specifically referenced by Craig Whittaker, the MP for Calder Valley, during exchanges on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill on 18th January 2023.
Mr Whittaker noted the disparity between EU rules on who can represent before the EUIPO, which includes requirements that the representative be an EU national and have a place of business in the EU, and the UK system where nothing more than a PO Box is needed.
He went on to note the detriment caused to UK businesses where representatives using PO boxes are less likely to respond.
Mr Whittaker said: “Now we have a multitude of PO boxes where a company’s attorney cannot even get a reply by email from those so-called companies. That means it has to go to court on virtually every occasion. That is many times more costly for UK companies, not to mention the huge amounts of frustration and irritation that comes with the current process.
“To highlight how huge this issue is, these foreign-based firms with PO boxes now account for 39% of all UK trade mark applications at the UK Intellectual Property Office, compared with just 19% prior to Brexit in 2019.”
He gave a cautionary conclusion noting that: “if we are not careful, we will have a situation where trade mark-intensive industries, which by the way account for £770 billion of our GDP each year, may be completely undermined by what appears on paper to be a good change of legislation, but which in reality has the ability to totally undermine the sector and a huge part of our GDP.”
CITMA is proposing a solution that would fix this issue and would mean that UK businesses would not need to deal with unqualified representatives, many of whom have little knowledge of our system.
CITMA is asking that to represent someone other than yourself, or your business, at the UK IPO you must:
- Be appropriately regulated with suitable insurance (which is the case for any person regulated under the Legal Services Act 2007); and
- Be an appropriately qualified professional with knowledge of the UK system.
Implementing these simple changes will drive up standards, make the system easier to navigate and help British businesses to grow rather than becoming tied up in red tape.