The Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance’s responses to the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, an independent review of the UK’s copyright framework.

(March 2011)

Background

The Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth was an independent review of the UK’s copyright framework, chaired by Professor Ian Hargreaves.  It was commissioned in November 2010 to review how the framework supports economic growth and innovation. 

LACA’s response

LACA sumbitted evidence that demonstrates where and how the copyright framework hampers innovation and impacts the production and delivery of goods and services to the users of library and information services and archives.

The Review’s recommendations

The report, “Digital Opportunity: A review of Intellectual Property and Growth”, published in May 2011, made ten recommendations to government.  These include:

• Evidence: The development of the IP System should be driven by objective evidence.
• Copyright licensing: The UK should establish a cross sectoral Digital Copyright Exchange 
• Orphan works: Legislation to enable licensing of orphan works.
• Limits to copyright: Copyright exceptions at national level to realise all the opportunities within the EU framework, including format shifting, parody, non-commercial research and library archiving. The UK should also promote at EU level an exception to support text and data analytics.

Government’s response

The UK Government accepted all 10 recommendations.