Uk Japan Agreement Text

The agreement also allows the UK to request up to seventy additional geographical indications for its products, in addition to the seven currently made available to the UK under the EU-Japan EPA. These geographical indications are used to protect products from designated areas in the United Kingdom and Japan from unacceptable replications. Examples of products that receive such a designation are scotch whisky, kobe beef and other local dishes. The EU-Japan EPA also provides for these geographical names; However, the UK can now benefit more from it. UK Trade Minister Liz Truss and Motegi both announced the inclusion in CEPA of a chapter on digital trade that distinguishes the EU-Japan EPA agreement. This chapter aims to define clear rules for the cross-border transfer of data and to ensure better protection of trade secrets related to algorithms and encryption. The Chapter contains a high level of data protection during cross-border transfers of personal data between the United Kingdom and Japan and minimises unjustified data localisation requirements that would otherwise require personal data to be stored in the jurisdiction in which they were collected. It is hoped that these principles will help Japanese and UK companies avoid the additional costs of setting up physical servers in all jurisdictions for data processing. Cepa between the United Kingdom and Japan contains intellectual property protection measures similar to those of the EU-Japan EPA, although the conditions for the protection of certain intellectual property assets go beyond those provided for in the Europe Agreement. For example, the standard term of protection for designs is set at twenty-five years after CEPA UK-Japan, compared to twenty years after EPO EU-Japan. Limited five-year extensions for patents for medical inventions are also included in CEPA in the UK-Japan, but not in the EPO EU-Japan. Nevertheless, the successful UK-Japan CEPA negotiations mark a promising step forward in the UK`s willingness to join the Transatlantic Progressive Partnership Agreement (CPTPP), just as like-minded Western democracies and Asian allies are determined to counter China`s growing influence in the region. The CPTPP is considered a “gold standard” for free trade agreements in Asia and reduces tariffs to 99.9% of the products covered by the agreement.

Membership of the CPTPP would provide the United Kingdom with significant market access opportunities in Asia. In addition, Tokyo expects the UK`s CEPA to be a positive but informal step to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence community as a sixth member (of which the UK is already a part), as an additional hub to China`s global ambitions. With this limited success at CEPA UK-Japan, the UK is counting on negotiating a favourable free trade agreement with the US in order to further improve its negotiating position with Brussels. That hope, however, was complicated by the recent US presidential election, in which the pro-Brexit Donald Trump faced a more Eurocentric Joe Biden. While Donald Trump was open to negotiations for a free trade agreement with the UK, which has few conditions, Joe Biden says any free trade agreement with the UK is conditional on meeting the terms of the Good Friday agreement, which would prohibit the imposition of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. . . .