In November 2010 UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced an independent review of Britain’s Intellectual Property (IP) laws and their effect on economic growth and innovation. A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth chaired by Professor Ian Hargreaves was published in May 2011. The review makes a number of significant recommendations in an effort to ensure the UK has an IP framework designed to support innovation in the digital age.
One of the more innovative of the review’s recommendations is the establishment of a Digital Copyright Exchange to facilitate licensing. This would facilitate potential licensees in quickly identifying and contacting relevant rights-holders and thereby automating the licensing process as much as possible. The report also encourages the UK to support the European Commission’s proposals to establish a framework for cross-border licensing. In relation to “orphan works”, the Hargreaves review echoes the findings of a European Commission study, as reported in our previous article, by endorsing the creation of a licensing system for orphan works which would allow for mass licensing as well as individual clearance.
The review also recommends the introduction of a number of copyright exceptions. These are proposed to include exceptions to cover parody and criticism, non commercial research and library archiving. It is also recommended that legislation be put in place to prevent parties being able to contract out of these exceptions. Interestingly, the review rejects the introduction of a US style “fair use” exception, an issue we discussed in a previous article in relation to Ireland.
The review also aims to tackle the prevalence of patent “thickets” and other obstructions to patent innovation. It suggests a number of ways in which to deal with this problem including:
- more collaboration between patent offices to cut backlogs in applications
- ensuring patent protection is not extended to new areas unless clear benefit arises from such an extension and
- the amendment of renewal fees to encourage patent owners to assess whether it is worthwhile maintaining lower-value patents
The review recommends the introduction of a small-claims procedure for low value IP claims along with reform of the Intellectual Property Office to give it powers to issue statutory opinions where these would help to clarify the application of copyright law.
Finally, the review is particularly critical of the way in which IP policy has developed in the UK. According to Hargreaves, future development should be driven by objective evidence instead of political motivation which has often proved contrary to expert advice. Policy must seek to balance economic objectives against social goals, and the potential benefits for rights-holders against impacts on consumers and the public interest. It will be interesting to see if the recommendations of the review are implemented in the UK and whether the Irish government follows suit and undertakes a comprehensive review of our IP system.
Contributed by John Magee.
