UK IP News
British citizens have been subjected to the highest level of surveillance in the EU region! No thanks to the British Telecom’s testing of its controversial behavioral advertising on its users, the European Commission has come out strongly against what it called a perverted systematic surveillance of its own people by a country in its fold. The testing has been done on the internet, where most of its unsuspecting users were unaware of it, and to make the matter worse, the British government don’t seems to care.
There will be a commission hearing and the British government would most likely to be called up to defend its position. Britain already has the most number of surveillance cameras fitted unto street lamps, roof tops and what not, the purported purpose being to deter and beat crime and terrorism. And now, the internet as well, with an UK listed company named Phorm using a technology that allows an internet service provider to track what the internet user do on the net. With the data, the internet service provider is allowed to sell them to third parties who would be interested on the shopping habits of surfers. But this knowledge could fall on people with bad intents and thus could bring danger to the unsuspecting citizens of UK. To the internet service provider, it is purely an internet marketing system, but to the end users, their privacy is at stake!
A new 85-page study report, commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP), and entitled Copycats? Digital Consumers in the on-line Age has reported that there are an estimated seven million people in Britain involved in illegal copying of intellectual property, mostly on music and movie files from the internet. Researchers from the UCL’s Centre for Information Behavior and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) found that on one peer-to-peer network at midday on a particular weekday, there were 1.3 million users sharing content.
There is no doubt it constitutes a huge economic loss of revenue for the IP holders and government advisors are concerned. A rough estimate of the loss amounts to about £120 billion. David Lammy, British Minister of State for Intellectual Property, said, "The report helps put the scale of the problem into context and highlights the gaps in the evidence which need to be filled. It is important that we understand how online consumer behavior impacts on the UK economy and the future sustainability of our copyright industries. He added, "Illegal downloading is not an issue confined by national boundaries. I am sure other EU States and their copyright industries will find this report of use in the development of policy." Well, there is no doubt that it is a global problem, made worse by the easy availability of broadbands!
May 29th 2009
Oh, we all already know that Men are more inclined to piracy. Any one wants to dispute that?
As if to endorse a truth that we all already know about, piracy is indeed ingrained in men’s mentality, and a UK company by the name of Telindus has found in a survey that men tends to treat illegal copying of other’s work as a right, and often are not sure about the legality of it. Most don’t believe that paying for downloads on the internet is the right thing to do. Like most things on the internet, it should be free, or at least it is treated like finder’s keeper! The survey was done on 2000 UK adults.
Even knowing that piracy is a crime with fifty percent of those surveyed does not deter them from illegally downloading copyrighted contents. In the same survey, 20% says they know where to find illegal copies to download. And among the younger sets, especially teens, almost sixty percent of them know where to source for illegal downloads, and a high percentage of them actually downloaded copyrighted materials like music and videos. To them, the interpretation of ‘fair usage’ is just that, they are just being fair for they do not use the contents for commercial purposes.
There seems to be more confusion with regards to materials posted on the internet though. For example, if one were to post certain material on the internet, does one still get to own that material? To this, only 25% of those surveyed says they are still the owner whilst the remainder considered posted materials as out of their ownership. And since they don’t own them anymore, it goes without saying that they will also have the right to copy these materials from the internet without having to get permission, and certainly for free as well. Period. It looks like piracy is going to be entrenched on the net, no matter how vigorous copyright owners go about bringing defaulters to court!
26 July 2009.
New reduced court damages fee
CIPRA (Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys) of UK has gladly welcomed the recent decision by the Intellectual Property Court Users’ Committee to reduce court fees to a maximum of 50,000 British Pound. It used to even reach a million of a pound in rewards to the wining party, which made British court cases one of the highest in the European Union countries. With this decision, Britain will be one of the lowest priced countries where court case damages paid are concerned.
With the decision and a corresponding adjustment to the patent court rules, SME’s who are facing intellectual property cases will have their litigation speeded up and settled at a fraction of the previous cost, and at a time span of two working days. The decision has been taken in view of the many small start up companies that unwittingly fall into IP disputes, often brought about by larger established companies. In most cases, when they are found to be in violation, they are forced to windup their businesses, making it a great loss for the country as well as a loss of moral for the rest of the flock. This is indeed an innovative step, rarely found in great old England!
August 13, 2009.
Refusal to confiscate counterfeits on transit
Whilst other custom department (Dutch and German) had confiscated shipments of generic drugs on transit to South American markets, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), UK, acted quite differently by not agreeing to confiscate a shipment of counterfeit Nokia hand phones enroute to Columbia. The reason being that the goods were not intended for sale in the UK, and the judge who handled the case did however cautioned that there is indeed a loophole and the law should be amended, so as to go in line with the rest of EU countries.
In interpreting the existing UK law on trademarks, the HMRC said it did right because goods can only be confiscated if there is ‘an intention of sale’, and in this case, the goods were onboard a ship, and it in no way threatens the trading of the goods locally. In a sign of unhappiness, Nokia UK, being the complainant said that HMRC had interpreted the Counterfeit Goods Regulations in an “unduly restrictive” manner, whatever that means. However, if we were a civilized entity, it would be wrong for us to confiscate goods on board a ship on a mere suspicion alone. Doing so is tantamount to piracy, something like what the Somalian Pirates are doing now. Could the ships then carry arms to ward off these acts and protect from being robbed?
In a similar looking case, we should look at the recent suspicion of a North Korean cargo vessel that was suppose to carry arms for delivery to Myanmar. The ship was tracked by an American naval craft until Singapore, but the merchant vessel was not boarded by US Navy personals, even though it had the right to get onboard to ascertain whether their suspicion was correct. They could have said that they were just trying to enforce the UN resolution on the embargo of North Korean goods then. In this case, there is a UN resolution. Arguing from a similar vein, it would be best for the EU countries to obtain sanctions from no less a body like WIPO in order to detain these suspected counterfeit goods from a ship, even though the goods are not destined for sale in the territory concerned.
August 17, 2009.
UK service providers to pull the plug on illegal file sharers.
In a seemingly reversal of policy, the UK government is mulling as to whether it would allow Ofcom the power to instruct internet service providers to pull the plug on persistent illegal file sharing. It was previously indicated by the Digital Britain report that the government will allow for consultations until 2012 but there is real concern because almost half of all traffic on the net is hogged by file sharers. If action is not being taken now, UK could slide into a state with a bad boy image.
So far, the internet service providers are hesitant about pulling the plug on their own customers. More over, there is no clear laws as to who is going to do the monitoring and if they are asked to do the tracking of their client’s internet activity, who is going to bear the cost? Right at this moment, the file owners who are going to benefit if there is plug pulling, has not committed to any form of paying for the cost. It is technically quite a complicated affair to detect what is being shared between file sharers, and if the ISP’s have to do the job, they have to thread carefully, as any mistake that is made can open themselves up for legal suits.
Presently, a few of the ISP has used the soft approach with just sending out letters of caution to those they suspected of abusing their rights. They are mindful of the fact that a large number of file sharers are in the teenager category, and most of them are not doing it for any commercial reasons. Maligning such a sector might not be a good business proposition now, as they will grow up to hate the establishment in future. Then, looking at what is happening in Sweden, there is a real fear that the younger sets might not support the existing political parties of the day. Hopefully for the UK government, as well as their European counterparts, putting in place a law just so that the people will not treat piracy as a cult culture would be a consolation of sorts.
This update is partly sourced from BBC. August 26, 2009.
Times up for file sharers
If you live in the UK, and you do occasionally share files with others on the internet, beware, because you will receive a caution letter from either of the government, or your ISP, or intellectual property holders. But you need not panic as these letters are only a request on your part to stop the sharing. And you can ignore it if you want, but only for two more times. Britain, like France, will use the ‘three strike’ strategy to block offenders’ internet connection when they ignore warnings. However, offenders are allowed appeals and will not have their internet connections blocked until a verdict is reached. This was confirmed by the UK Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson in a recent interview, and the ruling will only come into effect by July 2010 and only as a last resort.
It is understandable that the UK has to enforce such a ruling as copy right infringements in the UK is purported to have reached ten percent. Total revenue from the sale of intellectual properties like film and music in the UK was estimated to be about 60 billion pounds for 2006. As peer to peer file sharing had increased many folds due to the ease of broadband availability in the UK, the amount of monetary lost suffered by IP holders could exceed eight billion pounds by 2010. There has been tremendous amount of pressure from music and film companies to pressure governments to act against copy right infringers in the EU. However, unlike France which has enforced a harsher law, the UK is treading on a more conciliatory stance. It would first monitor to see whether there is any increase in infringements before enforcing the three strike ruling. If would reconsider if there is at least a thirty percent reduction of infringement from now to July 2010.
October 30, 2009.
New uniform for British soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
In a belated exercise, the British Ministry of Defence has bought a batch of camouflaged uniform for its troop deployment in Afghanistan. The uniforms together with its intellectual property rights were bought from an American company and are reputed to be able to better merge the soldier’s profile with the Agfhan landscape. It is hoped that with the uniforms, the number of casualties from the troop deployment will be reduced. The design of the uniforms was the result of £ 250,000 spending and a six month of research. However, it defies logic to just use ordinary color schemes and patterns to outwit enemy forces. Surely with today’s high tech designers, one would be able to incorporate uniforms that can actively blend into whatever landscape they are in. Why didn’t they design textiles with printings that can indeed change its color like the chameleon?
December 23, 2009.
GSK creating patent pool for research users
International big boy GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) pharmaceutical firm is reported to be ready to release 13,500 chemical compounds to the public domain from its library. A New York news report says that besides the release, for the purported aim of helping others research into cures for Malaria, GSK also offer a eight million dollar fund to help scientist into researching more uses for the chemicals. Andrew Witty, the GSK chief executive further stated that his company will put drugs into a “patent pool”, thus waiving its IP rights just so that other researchers can make use of them.
January 22, 2010. Article extracted from the Guardian.
US and UK joining to tackle patent filings backlogs
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced an agreement with the U.K. Intellectual Property Office to figure out an "action plan" for reducing patent backlogs in both countries. Some economist has said that the delays can cost up to 11 billion dollars a year, and looking from the upswing in the world economy for 2010, the patent backlogs in both countries would only becoming worse. One of the suggestions is to share the work of reviewing patent applications that are filed jointly in both countries. David Kappos, director of the USPTO, said “every quality patent application that sits on the shelf represents jobs not created."
March 12, 2010