IP Review: official announcement from the IPO

Announcement from the Intellectual Property Office

Review of Intellectual Property and Growth

The Review will develop proposals on how the UK’s intellectual property framework can further promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth and social and commercial innovation.  It will examine the available evidence as to how far the IP framework currently promotes these objectives, drawing on US and European as well as UK experience, and focusing in particular on:

• Identification of barriers to growth in the IP system, and how to overcome them;
• How the IP framework could better enable new business models appropriate to the digital age. 

Among the subjects to which the Review is expected to bring this perspective are:

• IP and barriers to new internet-based business models, including information access, costs of obtaining permissions from existing rights-holders, and investigating what are the benefits of “fair use” exceptions to copyright and how these might be achieved in the UK;
• The cost and complexity of enforcing IP rights within the UK and internationally;
• The interaction of the IP and Competition frameworks;
• The cost and complexity to SMEs of accessing IP services to help them to protect and exploit IP.

The Review will make recommendations:

• on how the IP system nationally and internationally can best work to promote innovation and growth in the 21st century with a view to setting the agenda for the long term;
• on what short and medium term measures can be taken now within the international framework to give the UK a competitive advantage.

The Review will report to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by April 2011.