Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will request that the Intellectual Property Office publishes an impact assessment of the potential effect of an international copyright exhaustion regime on the UK’s (a) publishing industry and (b) other creative exports.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO), an executive agency of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is already considering the issues that the UK’s future exhaustion of intellectual property rights regime needs to address. The IPO will soon be publishing a consultation document that will lay out the options for the UK’s exhaustion of IP rights regime and ask for views from all interested parties. The consultation will help government assess the feasibility and potential impact of the different exhaustion of IP rights regimes. This will include consideration of impacts on the publishing industry and cross-border trade of goods in the secondary market, including goods from the creative industries.