Our lovely Chancellor Of The Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced on Friday that he has commissioned a twelve month review into intellectual property rights in the country. Chaired by a former editor of the Financial Times, Andrew Gowers, the review will consider a plethora of IP and copyright issues, including how well current IP provisions operate in the digital world. Gowers will be charged with the task of making recommendations as to how copyright law in the UK can better serve both consumers and those businesses whose main assets are IP.
Crucially for the music industry, the review will also look into the current terms of copyright protection on sound records, something the record labels have wanted UK and European authorities to reconsider for some time. The copyright on a sound recording in the UK currently runs for fifty years after the recording is made. That puts the British record industry at something of a disadvantage to the US, where the copyright on sound recordings is, if I remember rightly, 100 years. Perhaps more importantly, certainly as far as the UK music industry body the BPI is concerned, the publishing copyright on music runs for 75 years after a songwriter or composer's death - considerably longer than the copyright on sound recordings. The government has previously committed to examining these anomalies, and that task will now fall to Gowers as part of this review.
Commenting on the task ahead, Gowers told reporters: "I believe that intellectual property is at the heart of Britain's success in the knowledge economy. This review will ensure that we maintain a world-class environment for creativity, design and innovation."