The UK government has released the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property (December 2006) and all the research, testimony, evidence, and public comments collected by the Gowers commission during its review of UK IP law. From the report:
Recommendation 1: Amend section 60(5) of the Patents Act 1977 to clarify the research exception to facilitate experimentation, innovation and education....
Recommendation 3: The European Commission should retain the length of protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights at 50 years.
Recommendation 4: Policy makers should adopt the principle that the term and scope of protection for IP rights should not be altered retrospectively....
Recommendation 8: Introduce a limited private copying exception by 2008 for format shifting for works published after the date that the law comes into effect. There should be no accompanying levies for consumers.
Recommendation 9: Allow private copying for research to cover all forms of content. This relates to the copying, not the distribution, of media.
Recommendation 10a: Amend s.42 of the CDPA by 2008 to permit libraries to copy the master copy of all classes of work in permanent collection for archival purposes and to allow further copies to be made from the archived copy to mitigate against subsequent wear and tear.
Recommendation 10b: Enable libraries to format shift archival copies by 2008 to ensure records do not become obsolete....
Recommendation 13: Propose a provision for orphan works to the European Commission, amending Directive 2001/29/EC....
Recommendation 30a: The Patent Office should publish and maintain an open standards web database, linked to the EPO’s esp@cenet web database, containing all patents issued under licence of right.
Recommendation 30b: The Patent Office should publish and maintain an open standards web database, linked to esp@cenet containing all expired patents....
Comments.
All the report's recommendations that bear on research are good for research, even if the report omits other recommendations that would have been good or better. The overall thrust of the report is to restore balance to copyright and patent law, not to continue the trend of giving IP maximalists all that they want. That's good. But while the commission was wise and courageous to refuse to lengthen the term of copyright for sound recordings, for example, I can't understand why the same reasoning didn't apply to writings.
I used to cover copyright law in detail, at least insofar as it affected scholarly research and publication. But as news of hard-core open access developments has grown in volume, I've had to narrow my scope, and copyright is one issue I've had to prune. So I won't be covering the aftermath of this important report except where there is a clear OA connection.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2006 03:38:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
