All Party Intellectual Property Group discusses Digital Single Single Market

Along with Chairman Pete Wishart MP and Treasurer Jim Daly MP, Eddy Leviten of the Alliance for Intellectual Property and others from the industry and Parliament, I recently visited Brussels to discuss Commission proposals for the Digital Single Market which could have implications for copyright and the ability of the creative industries to finance the production in particular of film and AV product, such a strong element of Britain’s creative industries.

We came away somewhat reassured that the key objective for the Commission is portability of content rather than reform of copyright but there are slightly different messages coming from different directions both about objectives and process so time will tell.

We can expect a communication from DG Connect on overall strategy for different elements such as cross border access, so called geo-blocking, harmonisation of exceptions online intermediaries and follow the money/enforcement after the New Year and proposals on portability separately in the same timescale.

The APPG on IP will be publishing a full report on the visit and our conclusions shortly

"We came away somewhat reassured that the key objective for the Commission is portability of content rather than reform of copyright..."

— Lord Clement-Jones


Lord C-J urges better filtering for minors by Public Wifi providers

Recently I asked a couple of  questions in the Lords about why standards of filtering for Public WiFi are worse than those adopted by the mobile operators.Read more


Lord C-J on Startups: Financing getting better but major skills gaps

Here is what I said in the Queen's Speech Debate about Start Ups in  the Creative and Tech Industries and how we can partner with Chinese creative industries.

In many respects the Queen’s Speech is to be welcomed, precisely for the fact that it does not contain a huge amount of new legislation. None the less, I welcome the carryover of the Consumer Rights Bill and the Deregulation Bill. Curiously, I note for the aspiring statesmen among us that it will, among other things, make statues easier to erect. I do not know whether your Lordships noticed that.

Read more


Intellectual Property Bill

This is a Bill announced in the Queen's Speech this May which makes some valuable changes to the law applicable to designs both registered and unregistered and introduces a new Unified Patent Court to enforce the EU Unitary patent.

The Intellectual Property bill had its Second Reading on 22nd May. Whilst most of it's provisions are welcome there are a number of omissions that we argued should be corrected during the passage of the Bill through the House of Lords, in particular to align criminal offences for registered designs with those of unregistered design, to provide a remedy for lookalike products which mislead the consumer and to align criminal penalties for digital and physical copyright infringement.Read more