Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I should like to enter a dissenting note in relation to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble friend Lady Whitaker on this specific question of designs—for example, of furniture. It is not clear to me why it would be an improvement to extend the period of protected copyright in a registered design from the 25 years that has prevailed for a long time past to the proposed “life plus 70 years” period. The effect would be to perpetuate monopolies held by designers and their assignees, and by those who purchase intellectual property from them.

It is of course essential that there be a proper period of protection for intellectual property and that designers and other originators of intellectual property are able to enjoy a proper return and reward for their investment. However, it is not clear to me why the prices of the items that they designed—tables and chairs, for example—should be kept artificially high beyond 25 years, for perhaps 100 years and more.

Let me quote to my noble friend William Morris, a pioneer of English socialism and of English domestic design, whose general injunction was:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.

He also said:

“I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few”.

We must reward and incentivise our designers, but we must keep a balance that will enable people to have beautiful things in their homes. It is not clear to me why the price of a Charles Eames chair or an Eileen Gray table should be kept very high for long periods beyond 25 years, thereby preventing ordinary people having beautiful things in their homes.

I wonder also whether the proposed extension would prove to be policeable. I do not know what the noble Lord and my noble friend anticipate the intellectual property regime will be that will successfully police the manufacturing of furniture by, for example, 3D printing. The pace of change in the digital economy and its extent is so vast that we may need to think in more radical terms about how we find ways to protect the legitimate interests of individual and private rights holders while extending the benefits of digital design that are capable of being replicated at virtually no cost as rapidly and extensively as possible. I wonder whether it is sensible to try to continue to shore up this decaying edifice of traditional copyright, or whether Governments and possibly charities should not be finding ways to give the rewards to the designers but, at the same time, allow the maximum number of people to have the benefit of those designs as early as possible.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has put his finger on the real difficulty for designers. It is not that the period of copyright protection is too short; rather, it is too ineffective. What is needed for our designers is some method of ensuring that their designs are not ripped off extremely rapidly so that they have no effective period of protection. I have heard it said that new fashion designs that appear on the catwalks of London or Paris are copied within a very few weeks, and the copies are then retailed in our shops. If we wish to protect our designers, as we surely should because they are so talented, it seems to me that that is the direction in which we should look. Rather than extending the period of copyright protection, it should be made an offence to sell something that was designed within a shorter but reasonable period of time, and such goods should be seizable if they appear in the retail markets here.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, as has already been said, all of us around the House can welcome Amendment 84A. This has been a troubled point that has caused difficulty in another place as well as in Committee and here, so we welcome what has now been drafted. We think it does the trick, given what it was intended to do, so we are happy to put our weight behind it. However, it will be obvious from the short debate that we have already had on this rather complicated set of amendments on a rather complicated part of the Bill that not everybody is happy with the direction of travel here. It is important to reflect for a second on why that is.

The debates are really all about whether the Government are right to delete Section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and whether, by so doing and so ending the current regime of registered designs, which, as has been said already, has lasted for a good number of years, the Government have really and fully considered all the issues that flow from that decision. Implications would arise for products that are or are about to be put out of rights protection under the present registered design period of 25 years, and that will in future be copyright for a period of 70 years after the death of the designer. That is a substantial change.

As the noble Baroness just said—and I have a lot of sympathy for this—there is growing concern that the whole approach, which is reflected by this proposed change, goes against where good sense would suggest the issues are going to go in the future. Some countries have very little legal protection for copyright, and what there is is very weak, and others are moving in different directions from us. What is the point of trying to tie down longer periods during which protection could be offered if you cannot also put forward the necessary arrangements under which that protection is to be guaranteed?

There is of course a case, and a very good one, to be made for letting industrial designers have the same protection for their efforts as are available to composers, writers and the like. However, there are still some very real questions on this issue, which have led me to put down the amendment, which would delay the implementation of Clause 66 and give us time to consider two very different and rather important issues. The first is whether this is the right decision, and if so how and on what basis it will be introduced. We have not been given the detail here, we have not seen the draft regulations, and we are not aware of the timescale that the Government have in mind.

Secondly and more importantly, a lot of what is being argued, or will I think be argued by the Minister when he comes to respond, relates to the exceptions and changes that have been forecast by the Hargreaves review to the way in which copyright and copyright exceptions are organised. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in relation to 2D design representations of 3D designs. So much of what is going to change could, with the right sort of regulatory framework brought in under the Hargreaves exceptions, allow some guarantees and support for those involved. However, we simply do not know enough about it, so surely it would be better to see those regulations, take them through the due processes in this House, agree them in their original form or as modified if that is thought appropriate, and then consider whether Section 52 should be changed and the new regime brought in.

I will give a bit more detail on this. I asked the Minister in Committee, although I did not get much of a reply and he has not included any further detail in the letters I have received so far, why this proposal was not preceded by a consultation with stakeholders and why the impact assessment that has been published has very little detail about the impacts that will be implemented by its changes.. The impact assessment, although it is not complete, admits that the reform of Section 52 will harm consumer welfare, as classic designs—those that are more than 25 years old—will be remonopolised. Replicas that are currently available at some 15% to 20% of the price of an original will no longer be available, but no opportunity has been taken to consult consumers. Moreover, there are those who argue that the impact assessment significantly underestimates the other costs that will arise, partly because of its focus on furniture and three-dimensional design, and because it fails to acknowledge that section’s immunising effects on certain secondary uses.