Reforming UK's Intellectual Property Laws - Vince Cable

The Government has accepted all ten recommendations made in Professor Hargreaves’ independent review on intellectual property, which estimates a potential benefit to the UK economy of up to £7.9 billion.

Download the Government response in full



Among the recommendations that have been accepted are:

• That the UK should have a Digital Copyright Exchange; a digital market place where licences in copyright content can be readily bought and sold. This could add up as much as £2 billion a year to the UK economy by 2020. The Government will announce arrangements for how this work will be driven forward later in the year.
• Copyright exceptions covering limited private copying should be introduced to realise growth opportunities. Thousands of people copy legitimately purchased content, such as a CD to a computer or portable device such as an IPod, assuming it is legal. This move will bring copyright law into line with the real world, and with consumers’ reasonable expectations.
• Copyright exceptions to allow parody should also be introduced to benefit UK production companies and make it legal for performing artists, such as comedians, to parody someone else’s work without seeking permission from the copyright holder. It would enable UK production companies to create programmes that could play to their creative strengths, and create a range of content for broadcasters.
• The introduction of an exception to copyright for search and analysis techniques known as ‘text and data mining’, allowing research scientists such as medical researchers greater access to data.
• Establishing licensing and clearance procedures for orphan works (material with unknown copyright owners). This would open up a range of works that are currently locked away in libraries and museums and unavailable for consumer or research purposes.
• That evidence should drive future policy – The Government has strengthened the Intellectual Property Office’s economics team and has begun a programme of research to highlight growth opportunities.

Alongside the Government response, a new intellectual property crime strategy and international strategy for intellectual property have been published.

IP Crime Strategy

The crime strategy outlines how the Intellectual Property Office will continue to enforce IP crime issues domestically. Counterfeit goods often use other company’s trade marks or infringe their copyright, which can lead to financial losses.

The international strategy sets out the UK’s five year vision to get the international IP framework in the best possible shape to support innovation and growth. Patent backlogs cost the global economy up to £7.4 billion a year.

Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Wilcox said: “Intellectual property is a key UK export and global trade in IP licenses alone is worth more than £600 billion a year. UK businesses need to have confidence in the international IP framework so they are able to create and exploit value from their ideas.”

Additional Links

• Press Notice
• Intellectual Property Office
• The recommendations were made in May 2011 by Professor Ian Hargreaves in his report, - ‘Digital Opportunity: A review of intellectual property and growth’.
• Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Send in the iPad clones: Asus, MSI show off new tablet PCs at Computex

This year’s installment of Computex is getting off to a fast start when it comes to tablet PCs that hope to compete with the iPad.

While most top-tier computer companies haven’t provided details on devices that will go head-to-head with Apple’s tablet, two of the major Asian brands have unveiled their challengers at the Taiwanese expo.

Hoping to make the biggest splash, Asus is introducing two flavours of Eee Pad—a 10-inch model (EP101TC) that will run Windows Embedded Compact 7 and the 12-inch unit Eee Pad EP121 (pictured). This uses Intel Core 2 Duo CULV processors and Windows 7 Home Premium.

Windows Embedded Compact 7 is the latest version of Windows CE and is purportedly the basis for the Windows Phone 7 OS, but most buyers would presumably be more interested in the full Windows 7 experience.

Asus promises the EP121 will offer 10 hours of battery life, but the company provides little other info about the EP101TC, other than to say that Windows Embedded Compact 7 provides “engaging user experience and delivers instant connectivity to the Windows world”.

The good news is that the Eee Pads will be priced from $399 to $499. The bad news is that the devices won’t be available until the first quarter of 2011, giving Apple even more time to capture more than its market share.

MSI also announced a new tablet running Windows 7 Home Premium, but it’s going with an Intel Atom Z530 processor instead of CULV CPUs.

The WindPad 100 will come with a 10-inch display, 2GB of RAM, and a 32GB SSD drive. It is slated to arrive sometime in 2010 for around $499, but opinions are less than encouraging.

The prototype demo suffered from slow load times for applications. That’s a definite no-no running up against the iPad, which everyone can agree is quite responsive whether or not you’re a fan of the device.

If MSI can’t produce better performance from the final version of the WindPad 100, it has an alternative up its sleeve in the form of the WindPad 110, which is based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and will run Android instead of Windows 7. thought to be priced around $399, there’s nothing official on pricing or a release date.

So, until then hang on to your iPad.