Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Hanworth and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 9th November 2016 Other Business

[Viscount Hanworth]

I shall move Amendment 9. To continue, Amendment 11 relates to permitted communications, namely,

“giving notice to or by an information society service provider of the infringement of a patent”.

The amendment has been provided by the BBC and by BBC Worldwide Ltd at the instance of the Committee. The problem that it addresses was also recognised by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. It provided an amendment to new Section 21A(2), which had the same purpose as the present amendment. However, it was agreed that the text of its amendment was tortuous and that amendments to the same end were required in other places in the Bill, which is why we find them in five places. To that end, the BBC has provided five amendments that are to be placed throughout the Bill. They concern, respectively, patents, trademarks, registered designs, design rights and community designs. The wording of these amendments is virtually identical and so it is appropriate for me to speak to all of them together. As we proceed through the list of amendments, it should be clear which ones these are.

I should briefly describe what the problem is. It arises when a rights holder contacts an internet service provider, such as eBay, to assert that there has been an infringement of its rights. Someone may be advertising goods for sale using its trademark or infringing its brand. An example that was provided by the BBC concerns the sale of bespoke “Doctor Who” birthday cards, but there are many other similar cases that one can imagine. The action of the brand owner or the rights holder would be to contact the internet company—eBay, for example—requesting that it takes down the offending advert. The internet company would do so, while contacting the party responsible with information concerning the putative infringement and providing it with an opportunity to contest the action. In a contested case, it would encourage the parties in dispute to open negotiations.

A point that has to be stressed concerns the huge volume of such incidents. They have to be handled in a routine manner by dedicated teams within internet companies, which would be severely constrained if they were liable to the charge of making unjustifiable threats. Moreover, it is unclear in many cases whether the putative infringer would be regarded as a primary infringer, to whom it is legitimate to send a threatening letter, or a secondary infringer, to whom it would not be legitimate to send the letter. The Bill makes an allowance for this in cases where all reasonable steps have been taken by the claimant to determine whether the infringer is a primary infringer or a secondary infringer. However, in the cases that we are considering, which concern high volumes of low-value trades, the requirement to take all reasonable steps to determine the matter seems to be excessively onerous. We will come to this point on a later amendment.

The question of whether a notice issued by the complaining rights holder or by the internet company can constitute an unjustifiable threat is still undecided in law. These amendments attempt to clarify the matter. There has been some pushback from the Law Commission, which seems to be loath to allow any interference with its handiwork. Its comments have been addressed to the amendment of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys rather than to the offerings of the BBC, which it may not have seen. It has made two arguments. First, it has suggested that the matter can be dealt with adequately in the Explanatory Notes that accompany the Bill. It has also proposed, more generally, that any outstanding matters can be settled by case law. I do not regard these as adequate responses to the genuine difficulties that are arising. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

I am very sympathetic to these amendments. The internet is an international community, it has developed an international and agreed method of dealing with infringements and it would be daft of us to try to insist on a separate method of dealing with them just for the UK, even if we may be in that sort of mood as a country at the moment. This is a moment to try to swing behind an international system that works.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I would be grateful if, between now and Report, the Minister could write to me with some examples of cases decided on the basis of “all reasonable efforts”, so that I can get a real grip on what that means. It is a very uncertain phrase in English. If I wrote to Tesco asking, “Who made the cornflakes?”, and it said, “It’s not our policy to divulge that information”, would that be “all reasonable efforts”, or should I ask five or six times? If I cannot find a way on the website to communicate with somebody who appears to be selling products off a platform, are no efforts “reasonable efforts”? Particularly in the context of being asked to give way on Amendment 11 or whatever comes back on Report, knowing that, for example, the things that we are asking the BBC to do in defence of “Doctor Who” are actually reasonable and are not a ridiculous burden in defence of a 20p commission on a Doctor Who birthday card is something that we as a House should do. I would be grateful for an opportunity to see the sort of evidence that a court will see, against which it will judge whether a particular course of action involves all reasonable actions rather than just reasonable actions.

[Viscount Hanworth]

Yes, indeed, in my perception, “all reasonable” goes far beyond reasonability. I think that is a substantial point, although we are talking about just one word. I beg the Minister to take this matter away and consider it. I shall withdraw the amendment, but assure her that I shall raise it on Report if we cannot find any better way of phrasing this onerous demand.