Review for Science and Innovation in the UK

Hot on the heels (or indeed, breaking at the starting gates) of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property (due to be published tomorrow), the UK Treasury has announced the Sainsbury Review, the Review of Science and Innovation Policies of Government.

The new Review, to be led by Lord Sainsbury (former Parliamentary Under Secretary for Science and Innovation, pictured at right), will consider various Government policy developments and interventions, in the context of globalisation. Lord Sainsbury's retirement from the Department of Trade and Industry was announced by 10 Downing Street, 10 November 2006, when mention of the proposed review was also made.

The Review will make particular reference to (from the terms of reference)

• industry R & D and investment in innovation
• publicly funded R & D (including government departments) and investment in innovation
• knowledge exchange (universities and business), and progress since the Lambert Review
  
• supply of skilled persons
• supply of venture capital
• patents, measurement system and standards; and
• international science and technology collaboration.

The Review is due to report in time for the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review, and it will do so to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and Education and Skills.

The subject matter of the new Review appears to be strikingly similar to some issues just considered in the Gowers Review, which may lead one to ask why a new Review is commencing before the other is reported.

UK Patent Office - "Rules of Public Engagement"

Gareth Huw-Davies of the Sunday Times did an interesting story on the UK Patent Office this weekend, highlighting the significance of the public face of the Agency. Increasingly, intellectual property policy making has sought to engage the public in efforts to regain the legitimacy of intellectual property rights among the consumers of such products.

Ron Marchant, chief executive of the UK Patent Office, opened the third annual THINK kit awards this summer. The THINK kit awards, sponsored by the Patent Office, aim to promote innovation in school students. The awards are part of the contemporary public profile of the UK Patent Office, and its emphasis on the promotion of "intellectual property."

This is particularly significant in the context of the current climate of review and consultation in the UK, with publication of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, led by Andrew Gowers, expected later this year. It is anticipated that the document will emphasise the interaction between intellectual property laws and economic growth, particularly in the light of one of the key themes of the new Office of Science and Innovation - "levering the economic value from creativity." The Office of Science and Innovation, which includes the Patent Office and is within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is a significant branding of this public face of innovation in the UK and the policy initiatives of the Patent Office.

The Sunday Times described the new role of the Patent Office as one which is "regularly on the road" at workshops and advising firms. Marchant was reported in the Sunday Times as saying, "When I started as a patent examiner we basically opened a file, examined the patent, closed the file and it went off to a warehouse. We really didn't feel we had much impact. Now we have a very active engagement with our customers. We talk all the time about how we can help them."

UK Patent Office Publishes National IP Enforcement Report

The United Kingdom Patent Office has just released its National Intellectual Property (IP) Enforcement Report 2005.

The report is the second since Lord Sainsbury of Turville, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, launched the National IP Crime Strategy (Strategy) in 2004 and plans for a National IP Crime Group (IPCG). The Strategy is described as bringing together industry, government, and enforcers, "widely seen as the way forward" and "already bearing fruit." Plans for further education of the general public is also advocated in the report, "to convince the public that counterfeiting and piracy is not a victimless crime."

The report includes an introduction to TellPatTM, the national IP crime intelligence database. Lord Sainsbury describes TellPatTM as "a crucial strand in our Strategy," with numerous entries concerning IP crime "and the criminals involved." The information, however, comes from not only enforcement agencies, but also industry. The press release accompanying the launch states that more than 500 000 intelligence reports have been received by the Patent Office in the last 9 months.

Members of the IPCG, trading standards officers, and police officers, will all undertake training in the database over the next 12 months as it is introduced into the UK.

Notably, the report continues to concentrate upon initiatives that are motivated by the relationship between industry, government, and enforcement agencies. In this way, such initiatives do not necessarily engage with the public other than through education in "IP crime." By continuing to concentrate on traditional models of property in IP, it might well be that the Strategy utilises a dynamic that threatens to continue the alienation of individual users from the "crime" arguments. On the other hand, genuine "industries" in counterfeiting probably won't attend the classes.

Patent Office Consultation - Strategy for Innovation

The UK Patent Office has recently launched a consultation on its strategy for supporting innovation. The consultation comes in a current climate of reviews and public consultation, including the Gowers Review (on which a report is due later this year) and the Patent Office consultation on Inventive Step.

Responses are invited on a paper, which has been drafted for the consultation, setting out the strategy for innovation together with annexes outlining proposed activities. Among other activities, the proposed strategy suggests the need for greater information delivery and education, and includes such information delivery to schools, universities, and research bodies, as one of the key elements of that strategy.

Using the consultation response form provided, the deadline for responses to the consultation is 21 August 2006.

Review of UK Intellectual Property Rights

While the Patenting Lives conference was underway last Friday, the UK Chancellor announced as part of the Pre-Budget Report 2005 an Independent Review of the UK's intellectual property framework. The 12-month investigation and Review is to be led by Andrew Gowers, former editor of the Financial Times.

Fundamentally, the announcement is motivated by the government's commitment to achieving an efficient and effective copyright system in the context of the "digital age." This commitment was made as part of the Labour Party manifesto, which stated that "We will modernise copyright and other forms of protection of intellectual property rights so that they are appropriate for the digital age. We will use our presidency of the EU to look at how to ensure content creators can protect their innovations in a digital age. Piracy is a growing threat and we will work with industry to protect against it."

While clearly concentrating on copyright in a digital environment, the announcement makes clear an ongoing emphasis on intellectual property rights as an "incentive" - however, that incentive is expressed not only in terms of innovation but also as an incentive to "invest." This provokes the question, has the investment in these industries become a social value, a "creative" output, in and of itself?

Ron Marchant (Patent Office) - QMIPRI, 28 December

Ron Marchant, Chief Executive of the UK Patent Office, will speak in London, 28th December, as part of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute’s monthly seminar series, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. Ron Marchant joined the Patent Office as an examiner in 1969 and was made Director of Patents in 1992. Since January 2004, Ron has held the position of Chief Executive of the UK Patent Office. Ron has been active in modernising patent application procedures within the Office and developing programmes of co-operation with other national IP offices.

The format for the event, an interview with Ron by Barbara Cookson, promises to deliver a stimulating and possibly provocative exchange of views and discussion with the audience. Barbara Cookson is a qualified European patent agent, trade mark attorney and solicitor. Formerly in practice in a number of City firms, Barbara has now become managing director of Filemot Technology, a consultancy that provides IP and IT services for entrepreneurial companies.

The Ron Marchant Interview event will be held Monday 28 November 2005, 5.30pm - 7.30pm, in Dean Rees House, Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6BQ. Please RSVP to Ilanah Simon, i.r.simon@qmul.ac.uk