The publication of ‘Digital Opportunity’ follows a six-month independent review of IP and Growth, led by Professor Ian Hargreaves. He was asked to consider how the national and international IP system can best work to promote innovation and growth.
His recommendations aim to give the UK a competitive advantage – and put it on a par with international competitors. Taken together, they have the potential to add up to 0.6 per cent to annual GDP and to cut the costs of doing business with IP-related business by £750m within a decade.
The key recommendations are:
- the UK should have a “Digital Copyright Exchange”: a digital market place where licences in copyright content can be readily bought and sold, a sort of online copyright shop.
- the Government should legislate to permit access to orphan works, where the owner cannot be traced. For example some copyrighted works remain locked away because their authors either aren’t known or can’t be traced to give permission for use. In the worst cases, where one owner cannot be located – just one out of hundreds contained in a film or TV programme – they can effectively hold the interests of others to ransom as it becomes a criminal offence to exploit that work commercially.
- updating what it is lawful to copy. This includes copying for private purposes (such as shifting music from a laptop to an mp3 player) and copying which does not conflict with the core aims of copyright – for example, digital copying of medical and other journals for computerised analysis in research. For example an academic working on malaria cannot draw on previous research through data mining because they cannot get permission to copy the datasets they need to mine.
- the Government’s IP policy decisions need to be more closely based on economic evidence and should pay more attention to the impact on non-rights holders and consumers;
- changes to the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) powers to enable it to help the IP framework adapt to future economic and technological change
Professor Hargreaves said: “In recent years, the UK has failed to make the changes needed to modernise copyright law, for which we will pay an increasing economic price as we make our way into the third decade of the commercial internet. My recommendations set out how the IP framework can promote innovation and economic growth in the UK economy.
“The recommendations of the review are designed to enhance the economic potential of the UK’s creative industries and to ensure that the emergence of high technology businesses, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors is not impeded by our IP laws.”
Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “The Government is wholly focused on boosting growth – and we can’t afford to shy away from looking at complicated or controversial areas. That’s why I welcome this report and its clear link between intellectual property and potential economic growth. The report highlights real scope for changes to copyright laws which could add enormous value to the UK economy.
“Intellectual Property has an enormous impact on individuals, businesses and industries across the UK. It affects what we can and can’t do in business, education and in our daily lives. Technological innovation, successful creative businesses and strong international brands need to thrive.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne said: “It is vital that our Intellectual Property laws incentivise innovation and investment, helping to drive the private sector-led economic recovery.
“I warmly welcome Professor Hargreaves’ review on how the Intellectual Property framework can be updated to better support economic growth in the digital age.”
Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Wilcox added:“The Review presents opportunities to support dynamic UK businesses which will deliver innovation, growth and jobs in the years to come. It offers us the chance of a future with a developing market for Britain’s creative talent, where the value of innovation and research outweighs the fear of piracy and counterfeiting.This report is the culmination of six months of work by Professor Hargreaves and his panel of experts. We thank him and his colleagues for their hard work and we will be giving the review’s recommendations serious consideration and providing a full response soon.”
The recommendations in the report cut across a number of different policy areas and will be of interest to all Government Departments. The recommendations on copyright will be of particular interest to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Education.
Hargreaves Review Recommendations
- Evidence. Government should ensure that development of the IP System is driven as far as possible by objective evidence. Policy should balance measurable economic objectives against social goals and potential benefits for rights holders against impacts on consumers and other interests. These concerns will be of particular importance in assessing future claims to extend rights or in determining desirable limits to rights.
- International priorities. The UK should resolutely pursue its international interests in IP, particularly with respect to emerging economies such as China and Review of Intellectual Property and Growth India, based upon positions grounded in economic evidence. It should attach the highest immediate priority to achieving a unified EU patent court and EU patent system, which promises significant economic benefits to UK business. The UK should work to make the Patent Cooperation Treaty a more effective vehicle for international processing of patent applications.
- Copyright licensing. In order to boost UK firms’ access to transparent, contestable and global digital markets, the UK should establish a cross sectoral Digital Copyright Exchange. Government should appoint a senior figure to oversee its design and implementation by the end of 2012. A range of incentives and disincentives will be needed to encourage rights holders and others to take part. Governance should reflect the interests of participants, working to an agreed code of practice. The UK should support moves by the European Commission to establish a framework for cross border copyright licensing, with clear benefits to the UK as a major exporter of copyright works. Collecting societies should be required by law to adopt codes of practice, approved by the IPO and the UK competition authorities, to ensure that they operate in a way that is consistent with the further development of efficient, open markets.
- Orphan works. The Government should legislate to enable licensing of orphan works. This should establish extended collective licensing for mass licensing of orphan works, and a clearance procedure for use of individual works. In both cases, a work should only be treated as an orphan if it cannot be found by search of the databases involved in the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange.
- Limits to copyright. Government should firmly resist over-regulation of activities which do not prejudice the central objective of copyright, namely the provision of incentives to creators. Government should deliver copyright exceptions at national level to realise all the opportunities within the EU framework, including format shifting, parody, non-commercial research, and library archiving. The UK should also promote at EU level an exception to sup