"Creative Industries": Government's Response

HMG has responded positively to the recommendations of the Creative Industries Forum on Intellectual Property. Full of warm woolly language, the government's response could not be in greater contrast to Lord's Sainsbury's brush-off last year of its own advisory committee's recommendations on The Enforcement of Patent Rights and its failure even to acknowledge Mandy Haberman and Roland Hill's paper "Patent Enforcement for SMEs and Lone Inventors: A System Failure":

Why the difference in treatment? Is it perhaps that the "creative industries" forum is full of big names from computer (Intellect and Hewlett Packard), electronics (Phillips), publishers (Publishers Association), film (UK Film Council) and music industries (EMI) with only one regulator, hardly anyone representing consumers and nobody from the intellectual property, media and entertainment or even the criminal bar associations on even the "IP Crime and Online Infringements" working group. Contrast that with the membership which has representatives of small business - Mandy and Roland and in Richard Gallafent, at least one patent agent in independent practice but hardly anyone from big business, or government itself.

The creative industries are important to the economy but they are not more important than science and technology.

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