"The Personal Property Securities Act and IP: a simpler way?" is the title of an article by the Allens Arthur Robinson triumvirate of Tim Golder, Tom Reid and Thomas Middleton. This article has just gone live on the website of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP), where it may be accessed by subscribers or rented for a limited time by non-subscribers. According to the abstract:

"Australia's new Personal Property Securities Act came into operation on 30 January 2012. It regulates security interests in nearly all kinds of personal property, including IP, and contains rules governing priority between competing security interests. The Act expands the traditional concept of a security interest to include interests such as those arising under retention of title clauses.

The Act has replaced a range of registers of personal property security interests with a new, online Personal Property Securities Register, or PPSR, which will serve as an authoritative record for priority purposes. New security interests must be registered on the PPSR if the secured party is to have priority over holders of security interests in the same property, although there is a 24-month transitional period during which unregistered pre-existing security interests will remain protected.

IP practitioners should be aware of practical issues that may arise when registering or searching for security interests in unregistered IP, such as copyright. Non-Australian practitioners will also need to be mindful of the potential for the Act to apply to transactions involving Australian registered IP, even where the owner of the IP is not Australian".

The IP Finance blog has been monitoring this topic since it was first mooted back in 2008 (see earlier posts here, here and here).

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The most recent Arthur Allens Robinson IP Focus is on "IP and the transition to the Personal Property Securities Act".  According to its authors (Tim Golder, Tom Reid and Geoff McGrath), companies and individuals that own, license or hold security interests in intellectual property should be aware that the Personal Property Securities Register (the 'PPS Register') will go live on 30 January 2012, ushering in the reforms implemented by the Personal Property Securities Act 2009. This focus looks at the transitional arrangements and the implications of the new regime.

IP owners and their advisers should be aware that security interests over intellectual property which have already been registered with IP Australia (the Australian patent and trade mark office) will not be automatically migrated to the PPS Register and will need to be re-registered. During a 24-month transitional period, pre-existing security interests will continue to be protected -- even if they have not yet been registered on the PPS Register. Once that period ends, owners of pre-existing security interests that have not been registered will risk losing priority.

Thanks are due to Robyn Chatwood (Slaughter and May) for drawing my attention to this item.

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