Report gives businesses greater IP protection, says Kirwans’ James Corlett

CREATIVE small and medium enterprises (SMEs) wishing to enforce their intellectual property rights have been handed some good news.

The Government has broadly accepted the proposals contained within the Hargreaves report relating to Intellectual Property (IP) reform.

One of the proposals accepted is the set-up of a small claims jurisdiction for IP cases involving sums of £5,000 or less.

It will probably still be the case that arbitration may be the most effective way of settling claims, but it will provide low-cost access to justice for businesses, encouraging businesses to use and enforce their Intellectual Property rights.

It is likely that the new small claims track will be suited to copyright, design and possibly trade mark cases but would not be able to deal with complex patent disputes, which are more likely to be worth more than £5k.

New limited exceptions will apply to copyright rules. This will include “format shifting”, where a consumer transfers legitimately purchased music, for example, from CD to Mp3. This is technically not allowed under the present system, although most believe that this is acceptable.

Quite often, SMEs, daunted by the costs and complexities of bringing an action, simply cannot justify enforcing their rights against offenders.

Hopefully, these proposals will help to change the negative effects of the current system.