Comments on:

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:01:39 +0000

This consultation at the present time seems to take little interest in what is going on in the EU in regard to Patents and has shown its colours very clearly by all its MEP’s voting for “Software Patents”.
The Government including that figurehead of Lord Sainsbury showed it cared little for UK business in ammending articles in the EU which tried to make it easier to patent all things under the sun !.
The larger companies would like to have it easier to put more small businesses out of action.
I don’t think this Government can be trusted or should be trusted according to its past record.

By: James

James — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:08:07 +0000

Yeah, right, whatever! Key point: If you want a knowledge-based economy (I do too btw.) then, err, free the knowledge and don’t arbritarily restrict it. To be frank, I’m kind of sitting on the fence a bit here. I have no qualms with “IP” when it’s applied to genuine innovations in the physical domain, but I do have serious issues with it being extended to what is essentially “thought”. There is a line to be drawn, and computer software, being a branch of mathematics should not be patentable (but should remain under copyright where that path is chosen by the author).

By: Tom Morris

Tom Morris — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 23:32:39 +0000

A number of points:

1. This section claims that it will produce a strategic vision based on “sound economic principles”, but makes no mention of the fact that copyright is actually a contractarian bargain struck between the citizen – through the State – and the IP holder. The government should take note of the fact that intellectual property is a bargain, and that bargain relies upon the citizens of this country – the Public Domain – getting some benefit from the intellectual property bargain. Ever-increasing copyright term extensions do not offer any benefit.

2. The section mentions that much of IP policy is determined internationally. The Review should take account of the fact that this is not done by democratically elected bodies or governmental representatives, but rather by bodies such as WIPO, the DVB and so on.

3. The second paragraph of this section mentions that the Review should aim to balance “aims of promoting innovation, openness to trade and investment, and international development concerns”. This should also include the protection of the end user and the promotion of the benefits of public domain work to both the end user, producers and creativity as a whole (with all the usual examples that we use – Disney’s use of public domain fairy tales as a basis for it’s movies, Hollywood’s use of Shakespearean reinvention in movies such as West Side Story, the practice of commentary and criticism which has elevated the Bible and Shakespeare to foundational status for Western culture and the English language, and the way that if Hollywood set the rules, Shakespeare wouldn’t be readable because the Shakespeare player licence would have been remotely revoked).

By: David Mytton

David Mytton — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:35:05 +0000

The review is all well and good so long as it has an effect at the end. And within a reasonably timeframe. Laws take time to change, but I would like some kind of timescale defined as to what will happen afterwards and when, and what the government will do with the results and how they will put them into effect. The integration with Europe is more complex and so a strategy should be decided for recommendations for that. Can suggestions which clearly benefit the UK be implemented independently of the EU?