Intellectual Property Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister and noble Lords from around the House for what has been an extensive and very interesting debate. As I look around I see that a number of the usual suspects have been rounded up. I was actually a bit surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, is not in her place, as she said that we had not done anything on it. I spent at least three months of my life, together with a few others, examining the sheer delights of the Digital Economy Bill. We might not have got it all right; it was an unfinished work, as it ended up being decimated in the wash-up. Nevertheless, we understood and recognised the importance of this area of policy.

I, too, congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, on his maiden speech. It is a reincarnation and a giving-up of a 10-year vow of silence. He has an advantage on me; he obviously has some O-levels. I did not have any. I can only reflect that I once came second in a chemistry exam, but the remark on my report was, “Amazing. His behaviour in class is not so good”. It has lingered with me for 60-plus years. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will make a very powerful contribution, given his experience in the area of patents.

I think it was my noble friend Lord Stevenson who said that this is a slim Bill. My experience is that it can soon become obese, given the weight of amendments that it is likely to attract. It makes important changes to the UK design framework in line with some of what was proposed in the Hargreaves review. Measures that we have already heard about include changes to the scope of design, the protection and ownership of design, new routes of appeal against decisions made by the registrar relating to design, a power for the Secretary of State to provide for a non-binding opinions service—as a number of noble Lords have said, a very welcome provision—and provision for the inspection of documents. The Bill puts in place provisions to allow the UK implementation of the Geneva act of the Hague agreement. Most of these provisions are straightforward and positive and go some way towards strengthening and clarifying the framework, although we fear that they might not go very far in addressing the complexity of what the Hargreaves report referred to as a “patchwork of protection”.

The Bill amends the law relating to patents to enable patent owners to provide public notice of their patent rights; to expand the circumstances in which the IPO may issue an opinion in relation to patents; to allow the IPO to share information on unpublished patent applications with international partners; and to provide for the agreement establishing a unified patent court—a provision which seems to have met with universal approval around the House today and on we should congratulate the Government. An interesting question about whether there would be two courts was posed and I have no doubt that the Minister will pick it up. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned lower-value patents and keeping those costs down, which is also very important.

Finally, as we heard from the noble Baroness and from my noble friend Lady Warwick, Clause 19 introduces an exemption into the FOI Act in relation to research and a duty on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on how the IPO’s activities are supporting growth and innovation, both of which we support. The idea of reporting on growth and innovation was commented on by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Browne. Both the extent of the report and whether this idea could be extended were raised. I do not think that I need go any further on research and the FOI Act, because they were covered extensively by my noble friend Lady Warwick and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

Much of what is proposed in the Bill is intended to simplify the law and to ensure that it is understood, enforced and better supports innovation. As my noble friend Lord Howarth said, an interesting balance needs to be achieved between the desire to reward creativity and innovation and ensuring that competition and further innovation are not stifled. That will be a difficult judgment for us to make, and probably one of the most crucial, as we take the Bill through its Committee stage. The devil will be in the detail and we will ensure that the Bill gets the scrutiny it deserves.

We will look at each clause in detail to see how the Bill may be improved, and I must admit that I have some sympathy with the Minister as he tries to deal with the range of issues that have already been raised. Another issue which came up in relation to innovation versus competition was the domination of Microsoft over the years. Of course, it has not been total domination, as open source software, Linux and other systems became available. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, made a strong contribution to the debate on the power of the search engines. It was interesting, but I was not quite sure that I grasped what her solution would be to that world domination—no doubt that will emerge in Committee.

There was a significant difference of opinion on the key issue of whether to criminalise in relation to registered designs—the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, wanted the offence to include unregistered designs as well. As I listened to the noble Lord’s comments on that, one thought occurred to me: why do we not do something about the cost of registering designs? I would welcome the Minister’s comment on that. In this day and age where most things are being dealt with online, it should not be beyond the wit of man to reduce costs in this area; and if we are serious about stimulating the creative industries then we should be able to do so. A number of noble Lords expressed concern about extending criminality in this area. At this stage, all we would say is that we will pursue this matter extensively in Committee to see whether there are clear definitions and whether criminality is capable of being limited to those few examples of deliberate attempts to pirate and then copyright the theft.

The Minister referred to the small claims track into the patents county court. We welcome that as a useful step forward.

We share the Government’s view about the importance of the creative industries. Although there has been a lot of government rhetoric on this topic, enough is still not being done to support this essential sector of our economy. The Bill will of course play a part, but we have to recognise that the creative industries account for 3% of the UK economy and provide some 1.5 million direct jobs. They are one of the great success stories of our country and a driver for jobs and growth, yet there are concerns that they could be left behind without a clear strategy and leadership on the part of this Government.

This is a broadly positive Bill which we will engage with constructively and seek to improve. However, on its own, it is not up to the task of rebuilding our economy and creating growth in our industries, although it will play a significant role.