Gowers Review of Intellectual Property

At the Enterprise Conference on 2 December 2005, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that, as part of the Pre-Budget Report 2005 package, he was asking Andrew Gowers to lead an Independent Review to examine the UK's intellectual property framework.

The Open Rights Group has been formally invited to participate. We are currently drafting our submission and wish to include your thoughts and opinions. We have reproduced the Call for Evidence below and invite you to contribute - just hit 'respond' next to the paragraph you wish to comment on.

Many of the questions asked by Andrew Gowers in this review are very focused, but you should feel free to comment on the issues and the wider implications rather than feel obliged to provide specific answers. If you want to talk about issues not raised by this call for evidence, please do - just leave your comments on the Introduction.

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Call for Evidence

This call for evidence will form a key part of the evidence base that the Review team can use to develop its analysis. It will be used alongside a range of other evidence sources, including quantitative data; surveys and views of representative groups; visits; seminars; and interviews. We encourage stakeholders to submit evidence in three areas:

  • First, we invite evidence on a series of General Questions for each of these elements of the IP system identified. These are set out below.
  • Second, there are also a number of Specific Issues on which we would particularly welcome evidence. These are also set out below.
  • Finally, we also invite respondents to highlight other issues on which the Review should focus its attention that are within our scope, but not listed below.

NB: We welcome responses that only cover one or a few of the areas described, as well as responses relating to questions on IP that have not been explicitly set out below.

Link to this section

2 responses

  1. Tom Morris Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 23:38

    I’m rather sceptical about stakeholder theory, but if that’s the way they want to play it…

    We should be arguing that the following people are stakeholders:

    Consumers.

    Independent creators and artists.

    Academics, librarians, archivists, research students and others involved in the academic/intellectual process whose ability to access work may be limited by copyright law, DRM and the such like.

    Independent technologists undertaking fair use projects – from the Promise TV family to DVD Jon, to open source hackers.

    Schools and universities, whose technology purchases and fair academic use of audio-visual and online technology will be limited by the increasing use of technology and law that prevents fair use or modifies hardware.

    BBC Licence Fee payers, whose ability to access the material they have paid for is being hindered by DRM and other reformed copyright laws.

    The list goes ever on.

  2. Gordon Says:
    April 21st, 2006 at 15:12

    I find myself very sceptical about the way evidence will be collected and from whom !.
    What questions are asked, what bias there is.
    On Software Patents the UKPO had a short consultation where the summary was skewed in their favour.
    The UKPO has its own agenda for seeing more patents granted and therefore generating cashflow.
    I think it’s about time the UKPO was privatised and stopped from making generalisations in regard to patents which widens the patent net to include items which should not be included.