Talk:United Kingdom

UK or England and Wales

I'm now reviewing the idea of having separate articles for:

• England and Wales
• Scotland
• Northern Ireland

I originally thought that separation was a good idea because (I could be wrong) each of those three has it's own court system which is bound by it's own precedents, and they each of their own legislative system (for some areas, but I don't think this includes patent law).

However, maybe a unified "United Kingdom" article would actually make more sense since all three share a unified patent office (UKIPO), and (I think) legislation is unified, and, although the court system is not unified, the rulings of each will still have some influence on the others and there might not be any useful case law from Scotland or NI anyway.

Any reasons not to move this to "United Kingdom"? Ciaran 16:17, 7 June 2009 (EDT)

I am (mostly) English and live in England. We have a complicated and evolving system of governmental bodies. Our main Parliament in London covers all of the UK, with the recent proviso that certain aspects of the Northern Irish Assembly involve power-sharing with the Republic of Ireland (IANAL and do not know the details). Other national bodies are the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly. Each of these three has some powers and responsibilities "devolved" by the UK parliament, but the degree of devolution differs between all three (for example the Scottish Parliament can levy an income tax, but the Welsh cannot).

Even in the days of full unification, Scottish law differed in various respects from English law - their historical differences were never fully reconciled. It is quite possible (but IMHO unlikely) that patent law differs in Scotland, but you'd have to ask a specialist to be sure either way.

OTOH, Wales was AFAIK fully governed by UK law, and (without knowing for sure) it seems unlikely that the Welsh Assembly would have gone its own way in recent years.

Northern Ireland had some differences from the UK, but again I suspect these had no impact on patent law, with no change since.

So overall, My opinion is that you are probably right to merge these, but don't blame me if some expert somewhere knows better. steelpillow 07:15, 21 June 2009 (EDT)

Did the UK uphold image processing patents before 1991?

See: Image processing patents Ciaran 15:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)