An Intellectual Property System for the Internet Age, James Boyle

Excellent review of copyright issues being reviewed in the UK currently.
An Intellectual Property System for the Internet Age, James Boyle
In November 2010, the Prime Minister commissioned a review of the Britain’s intellectual property laws and their effect on economic growth, quoting the founders of Google that “they could never have started their company in Britain” because of a lack of flexibility in British copyright.. Mr. Cameron wanted to see if we could have UK intellectual property laws “fit for the Internet age.” Today the Review will be published. Its conclusion? “Could it be true that laws designed more than three centuries ago with the express purpose of creating economic incentives for innovation by protecting creators’ rights are today obstructing innovation and economic growth? The short answer is: yes.” Those words are from Professor Ian Hargreaves, head of the Review. (Full disclosure: I was on the Review’s panel of expert advisors.)

The Review makes 10 specific recommendations covering patent, copyright and the policy-making process. Some examples: Patent law needs reform to prevent the formation of “thickets” that actually impede innovation, while patents should never be extended to non-technical software inventions or business methods. We found that while patents are working well for standalone innovations, such as a particular drug developed to treat a particular disease, there are problems in technical fields marked by “sequential innovation” such as information technology.
Read the full article here: http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2011/05/18/the-hargreaves-review-is-published/

Industry Collaboration and Academic Research

Researchers benefit from a reasonable level of collaboration with industry, not only bringing economic benefit to their institutions, but also increased publication levels.

That's according to findings presented by City University London economists at the Royal Economic Society conference in May. Cornelia Meissner outlined how she and her colleagues analysed the publications, research funds and patents of researchers in the engineering departments of Imperial College London and City University London between 1985 and 2006, and concluded that:

Researchers with no industrial involvement are likely to be those with the least research outcome ... Nevertheless, high levels of industrial involvement affect negatively research productivity in terms of number of publications.

The authors recommend that universities should, through Technology Transfer and Knowledge programmes, encourage collaboration with industry, while continuing to provide incentives to encourage publishing.

See the full report here.

Meanwhile, at the Times Higher Education’s Employer Engagement conference in May, David Sweeney, director for research, enterprise and skills at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, argued that the pursuit of IP distracts from other areas of engagement with business which could potentially bring more income. HEFCE's policy, said Sweeney, will be to focus on what he termed 'shared investment' workforce development schemes, where taxpayers and employers share the cost of upskilling workforces through collaboration and exchange of expertise with higher education institutions.

For Hannah Fearn's report on a conference which involved much heated debate, see here.