tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post679077144120795690..comments2024-03-29T13:59:42.629+00:00Comments on The IPKat: Monday miscellanyVerónica RodrÃguez Arguijohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05763207846940036921noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post-8573407072267022772012-06-04T22:49:12.303+01:002012-06-04T22:49:12.303+01:00Francis Davey has covered the topic of the Copyrig...<a href="http://www.francisdavey.co.uk/2012/05/copyright-in-industrial-art-more.html" rel="nofollow">Francis Davey</a> has covered the topic of the Copyright provisions in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill on his blog. Personally I cannot see how removing s52 can be seen as anything other than retrograde. 'Iconic' designs of the sort discussed in the explanatory notes are adequately protected under the 1949 Registered Designs Act, not to mentioned the unregistered design provisions of the CDPA, without needing to extend the term of protection to the lifetime plus 70 years, especially when one considers that any designer worth his salt should have earned an equitable return on his intellectual efforts through canny manufacturing licensing deals, and not like some poor starving author, be relying on royalties as a form of pension for him and his children.<br /><br />But what concerns me far more is the unstated purpose of Clause 56. The explanatory notes on the Bill do not mention what amendments to Chapter 3 the Department for BIS has in mind, other than to give the Secretary of State a free hand to "add or remove exceptions to copyright". The supporting document on the BIS <a href="http://discuss.bis.gov.uk/enterprise-bill/files/2012/05/12-854-enterprise-regulatory-reform-bill-copyright.pdf" rel="nofollow">website</a> (in .pdf) says: " An order making power to allow amendment of copyright exceptions (via secondary legislation) will enable the Government to preserve the level of penalties which are set out in the substantive copyright legislation, which in some cases includes penalties of up to ten years for egregious cases of copyright infringement on a commercial scale. It would not allow any reduction or increase in penalties" but since Chapter 3 does not deal with penalties, this is a truly baffling explanation. One would hope that the sort of thing they have in mind is inclusion of legal format-shifting for private use as recommended by Hargreaves, but given that this clause will have been inserted at the behest of some industry lobby group, I think we can discount that.Andy Jnoreply@blogger.com