United Kingdom Decides To Keep UK+ Intellectual Property Exhaustion Regime

• 30/05/2025
• News

Following a stakeholder review, the Government of the United Kingdom (UK) announced on 15 May 2025 that it would keep its existing regime for the exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights, known as the “UK+ IP exhaustion regime” (see, attached statement). The decision implies that once authorised goods are placed on the market in the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA), then IP rights holders cannot stop further distribution or resale of those goods in the UK. By contrast, following Brexit, IP rights attached to goods first placed on the market in the UK will not be considered to be exhausted in the EEA which means that IP rights holders will be able to stop them from being distributed or sold onwards in the EEA.
 
The UK deliberately chose to maintain this asymmetric situation because the public consultation process (which gave rise to broad feedback from the life sciences industries) had shown this approach to “work well” and offer “stability” to the business community. Perhaps more importantly, the alternative regimes under consideration all presented significant drawbacks: 

• National exhaustion regime - This regime would have ensured that IP rights in goods would have been exhausted in the UK only if they were placed on the domestic market. However, this approach was not considered to be compatible with the unique arrangement for Northern Ireland (laid down in the Northern Ireland Protocol to the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement as amended by the Windsor Framework). This arrangement ensures that parallel goods may move from the Republic of Ireland and other EU Member States into Northern Ireland without restriction. 
• International exhaustion regime - This very liberal regime would have caused IP rights in goods to be exhausted in the UK when a good is placed on the market in any country and would thus have allowed businesses to parallel import goods from anywhere in the world without permission from IP rights holders.
• Mixed exhaustion regime - This regime would have customised the UK’s exhaustion rules for specific goods, sectors, or IP rights, and would have created complexity in an area that had been regulated in a straightforward manner. 

For context, the UK+ exhaustion regime applies territorially to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Its substantive scope includes trade marks, copyright, design rights, and patents.