IP and the creative industries: risk and rewards

 “We are blessed in the UK with extraordinary creativity which is backed up by superb training in technical skills and a supportive tax regime.  All this will be put at risk if creators cannot rely on a strong framework of intellectual property rights which are robustly enforced.”

Not our words – but those John Whittingdale, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee.  The influential body of MPs this week released a report reminding UK legislators of the huge contribution the creative industries make to the UK economy, and making recommendations as to how the industry can continue to thrive.  A few points jumped out at me:

Creative industry’s contribution to the UK economy.

 Quantifying the exact value of such a rapidly evolving industry is always a tall order, but I suspect the £36.3 billion figure the committee quotes may be a low estimate. Past calculations by Nesta put the value as high as £50bn.  The best estimate for copyright’s contribution is c.£5bn (IPO / Imperial College)

1.5 million people are employed in the creative industries or in creative roles in other industries. 

 This is remarkable – 1.5 million jobs is over 5% of total UK employment.  200,000 of these jobs are in publishing, many of them the newspaper and magazine titles which NLA revenues support.

The industry needs a central champion of Intellectual Property (IP) in Government.

 It does feel that the Government has a somewhat schizophrenic approach to the creative industries. It helps with one hand (part funding the copyright hub) and hinders with the other (unexpected and unwarranted proposals to weaken the copyright regime).  A clearer remit for an individual or group to champion IP rather than challenge it would be helpful.

As the report says, much more evidence and scrutiny is required before any exceptions to copyright such as those proposed in the Hargreaves review are applied.

David Pugh