Just a few days ago the UK went to the polls and returned a verdict which shocked the country, Europe and the world. Oh, and wiped $3 trillion off the world stock market.

The following days in Westminster have been (mild understatement follows) somewhat interesting. The UK Prime Minister is on his way out, the Conservative Party is gearing up for a leadership contest,  Boris has been betrayed by the Govefather, Jeremy Corbyn has installed a revolving door in his Shadow Cabinet and Nigel Farage went to the EU Parliament to suggest a cardiac surgeon born in a Soviet gulag had never had a real job in his life.

What everyone is now waiting for is for the UK to give formal notification under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union of their intention to leave the EU. “No notification, no negotiation” was the call from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Clearly once (if?) the UK gives Article 50 notification then it looks like it will be faced with years of negotiation to determine our relationship with Europe once we’ve left the EU club.

Intellectual property considerations are likely to be way down the list of things to be discussed*.  In the meantime however, IPcopy will be pulling together a Brexit resource to cover the impact of leaving the EU on IP rights. Head on over to our new “Brexit & IP” page to check out our pre-Brexit referendum posts and also our IP briefing note which was published on 24 June 2016.

IPcopy has also been following the Jack of Kent blog and the same author’s Twitter feed­. These interesting resources have been discussing the gradually slipping timeline for Article 50 notification in the last few days and it’s well worth a look.

The last 11 days have been somewhat unbelievable and IPcopy still has trouble believing that we’re not all in some kind of shared dream or simulation. This feeling was reinforced last week when it transpired that Keanu “Neo” Reeves had visited parliament raising hopes that the whole thing had just been some horrendously large glitch in the Matrix.

Mark Richardson 4 July 2016

*I wouldn’t be surprised if the signing ceremony for the UK-EU trade deal goes something like: “Do you have a pen?”, “Here you go”, “Thanks, ….oh slipped my mind, do we have anything on IP in here?”