Tagged / IP

Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) celebrates 25th anniversary

The Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) at Bournemouth University has celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The previous and current directors of CIPPM with Professor Einar Thorsen

From L-R: (Top) Prof. Martin Kretschmer. Prof. Einar Thorsen, Prof. Maurizio Borghi, (Bottom) Prof. Ruth Soetendorp and Prof. Dinusha Mendis

Established in 2000 by founding directors Professor Ruth Soetendorp and Professor Martin Kretschmer, CIPPM has since carried out over 50 research projects by around 100 members – informing intellectual property policy in the UK and internationally.

In 2018 the Centre was named as a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence for European Intellectual Property and Information Rights, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

Research and consultancy projects have covered topics including 3D printing and intellectual property law; copyright and the regulation of Orphan Works; and the music publishing industry.

CIPPM research commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office recommended the introduction of a parody exception to copyright, which was adopted by the UK government and has benefited the creative sector through increased income, innovation and freedom of expression.

To celebrate the anniversary, CIPPM hosted a two-day event, bringing together past and present members and collaborators to showcase the changing landscape of intellectual property and the work of the centre during the past 25 years.

Opening the event, Professor Einar Thorsen, Dean of the Faculty of Media and Communication, said: “[CIPPM’s] reach across BU and beyond is truly incredible.

“The centre rightly prides itself on its reputation of evidence-based research and interdisciplinarity, exemplified by strong links with other departments within our faculty.

“The work of the centre extends nationally and internationally. It is really impressive and we’re incredibly proud of it.”

Panel of former and current directors of CIPPM at 25th anniversary event

The former and current directors of CIPPM took part in a panel discussion

As part of the event, the past and current directors of CIPPM – Professor Martin Kretschmer (Founding Director, 2000-2012), Professor Ruth Soetendorp (Founding Director, 2000-2007), Professor Maurizio Borghi, (Director, 2013-2021) and Professor Dinusha Mendis (Director since 2022) – came together for a panel discussion to share their insights and experiences of being part of the centre.

Professor Kretschmer spoke of CIPPM’s unique approach of looking at the effects of IP law and its impact, working with businesses and companies of all shapes and sizes to help them understand what IP meant for them.

Professor Soetendorp described CIPPM as acting like a ‘marriage guidance counsellor’ – bringing together partners and helping them to understand each other.

Professor Borghi added that CIPPM brought together intellectual property enthusiasm and scepticism, adding that a critical view of the limits of IP was needed alongside a strong and solid knowledge of the field, while Professor Mendis spoke about the creative and collaborative approach taken by CIPPM, talking to people outside of IP law.

When asked what the biggest challenges in the next 10 years might be, the panel spoke about advances in technology such as AI, changes in geopolitics and foreign policy, and maintaining a balance of IP rights against other legal protections like trade secrets and confidentiality.

Attendees at the event were also asked to contribute to a time capsule, writing their predictions for the future of both the centre and intellectual property.

Professor Dinusha Mendis, current director of CIPPM, said: “CIPPM isn’t the biggest centre but the people we have – whether they are permanent staff or visiting fellows – have built a vibrant community.

“It’s not about the quantity but the quality of what we do. CIPPM members together have achieved a lot, and we can be really proud of that.”

Find out more about CIPPM

BU case study included in knowledge exchange repository shared by Knowledge Exchange Concordat

Knowledge Exchange

The Knowledge Exchange Concordat (KEC) Advisory and Operational group has produced a repository of resources to support higher education providers improve their knowledge exchange (KE) practices.

The repository has been created in partnership with the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) and features good and innovative practice in knowledge exchange across eight different KE principles, including a set of toolkits and guides available for use by HE institutions.

BU’s IP Policy, Research Intellectual Property Strategy and Evaluation Committee (RIPSEC), and the IP commercialisation management framework are among the case studies being shared. Our approach was chosen specifically as an example of good practice and innovation in the sector.

The repository, which includes a set of knowledge exchange toolkits and guides available for use by higher education institutions, will be launched at the KEC Repository of Good Practice Launch event tomorrow (20th July 2023).

The event will be hosted on Zoom between 10am-11:15am. Lesley Hutchins, Research Commercialisation Manager at BU, will be a guest speaker at the event. You can register for the event on the Knowledge Exchange Concordat website.

Read the BU case study – Research and Intellectual Property (IP) Policy

Trusted Research – information now live

Guidance, Research assessment, Research Ethics

Within the Research Environment pages on the BU website, there is now a section on the Trusted Research agenda.

The Trusted Research Agenda is a government initiative to secure the integrity of the system of international research collaboration and innovation.

Please visit the page to find out more, including key details and guidance.

Firms putting more of their assets under IP

innovation

business_law
UK industry is investing more than £70 billion a year in intangible assets covered by intellectual property rights, the national agency responsible for regulating patents and copyright has said.
In its booklet Fast Facts 2017, the Intellectual Property Office—the government agency formerly known as the Patent Office—reveals a steady growth in industry investment in IP rights. Companies spent £70bn on assets protected by IPR agreements in 2014, compared with £47 billion in 2000.

The booklet contains facts and figures which describe the intellectual property landscape and provides information on:

  • patents
  • trade marks
  • designs
  • copyright
  • enforcement
  • the IPO

Further information including a printable version of the Fast facts 2017 can be found here.

Universities increase income from business collaboration

Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

Technology in the hands

UK universities earned £4.2 billion from provision of services to businesses and collaborative research in the 2014-15 academic year, up from £3.9bn the previous year.
The latest Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey (2014 – 2015), published on 7 April by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, looked at all publicly funded UK higher education institutions and their interactions with businesses and other organisations.
In 2014-15, the largest chunk of this income was from collaborative research involving public funding, which reached £1.26bn, up from £1.14bn in the previous year. This was a change in emphasis, as in 2013-14 universities gained most of their income from contract research. However, contract research earnings also increased between 2013-14 and 2014-15, from £1.2bn to £1.21bn.

Universities also upped their earnings from courses for business and the community by £35m to £715m, from regeneration and development programmes by almost £22m to £205m, and from intellectual property by £24m to £155m.

The analysis also includes information on the number of spinouts and start-up companies created by UK universities, and shows that the number of graduate start-up companies created in 2014-15 was 4,160, lower than the 4,581 companies started in 2013-14.

However, the total number of active firms with some involvement from a higher education provider in the UK was 13,045 in 2014-15, up from 11,856 in 2013-14.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England will publish its analysis of the data for England later in the year.

This article was posted in Research Professional.

You can set up your own personalised alerts including news  on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

 

 

Technology Transfer: European IPR Helpdesk Webinar

Knowledge Transfer


European IPR webinars

 

The European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are promoting those relevant to EU Horizon 2020 activities.

The next webinar on Intellectual Property Rights in H2020 will be on:

23/3/16     9:30 AM     Technology Transfer        Location:  TAG 30 – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour. We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar(s) from your own desk rather than joining us. You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events.

If you would like to attend any of these, please email Dianne Goodman stating which webinars you will attend. If they prove very popular, we may need to change the room, so pre-booking is essential.

European IPR Helpdesk Webinars

European IPR webinarsThe European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are promoting those relevant to EU Horizon 2020 activities.

The next webinars on Intellectual Property Rights in H2020 will be on:

10/2/16    9:30 AM     Introduction to IP        Location: TAG 03 – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

2/3/16        9:30 AM     IP in EU funded projects / H2020        Location:  TAG 32 – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

23/3/16     9:30 AM     Technology Transfer        Location:  TAG 30 – Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

4/5/16     9:30 AM     IP Management in H2020 with a special focus on Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions        Location:  P402 – Poole House Talbot Campus

Duration: 60 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour. We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar(s) from your own desk rather than joining us. You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events.

If you would like to attend any of these, please email Dianne Goodman stating which webinars you will attend. If they prove very popular, we may need to change the room, so pre-booking is essential.

European IPR Helpdesk Webinar

The European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are promoting those relevant to EU Horizon 2020 activities.

The next webinar on Intellectual Property Rights in H2020 will be on:European IPR webinars

20/1/16        9:30 AM     Presentation of the services of the European IPR Helpdesk. Location: TAG30, Talbot Campus

Duration: 30 minutes (presentation) + 15 minutes (Q&As)

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour. We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar(s) from your own desk rather than joining us. You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events.

If you would like to attend any of these, please email Dianne Goodman stating which webinars you will attend. If they prove very popular, we may need to change the room, so pre-booking is essential.

European IPR Helpdesk Webinars

europeThe European IPR Helpdesk is running a number of webinars over the next few months and RKEO are promoting those relevant to EU Horizon 2020 activities. These are:

30/9/15    IP in EU-funded Projects/Horizon 2020

02/11/15  IP Management in H2020 – with a special focus on MSCA Casterbridge – Talbot Campus

02/12/15   Impact and Innovation in H2020 – a Guide for Proposers  The Octagon – Talbot Campus

16/12/15   Maximising the impact of H2020 projects  B325 – Bournemouth House – Lansdowne Campus

Please arrive at 9:15am for a prompt 9:30 start with the webinar duration being one hour (45 minutes presentation with 15 minutes for questions). We have the room booked for a longer time so that we can have a post-webinar discussion afterwards, if appropriate. Please only register on the European IPR Helpdesk link if you will be joining the webinar(s) from your own desk rather than joining us. You can also check the European IPR Helpdesk Calendar for all their events.

If you would like to attend any of these, please email Dianne Goodman stating which webinars you will attend. If they prove very popular, we may need to change the room, so pre-booking is essential.

Two new copyright papers by Business School Professors

Professor Ruth TowseProfessor Ruth Towse’s article What we know, what we don’t know, and what policy-makers would like us to know about the economics of copyright, published in the Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues (2011, vol. 8(2), pp.101-120) was recently listed on Social Science Research Network’s (SSRN) Top Ten Download list for: Intellectual Property: Copyright Law eJournal.

Ruth Towse is Professor of Economics of Creative Industries in the Business School, and is Centre for Intellectual Property and Policy Management (CIPPM) co-director (economics).

Professor Paul Heald’s ongoing study exploring the public domain effects Professor Paul Healdof copyright law was reported on The Atlantic, among other places. It shows there are twice as many newly published books available on Amazon from 1850 as there are from 1950.

Paul Heald is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois and Professorial Fellow at the CIPPM, Bournemouth University. You can read more about Professor Heald’s work here.

New EU IPR guidance for SMEs

SMEs can sometimes be  nervous of getting involved in FP7 projects because of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). The European Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Helpdesk has published new guidance intended to give SMEs an overview of how IP should be managed within FP7.  The guide addresses issues faced by participants at the proposal stage, during negotiation and implementation, and upon completion of the project. It also contains a glossary and a list of links to useful resources.  The guide can be used in conjunction with the three more detailed guides addressing IP issues at different stages of FP7 projects which were published at the end of 2011.

Bamboozled by Intellectual Property Right in FP7 proposals…?

Then the new factsheets published by the European Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Helpdesk is for you!

The factsheets aim to help you with your IP issues at different stages of FP7 projects before you start writing your proposal. How to manage IP in FP7 during the proposal stage looks at some of the issues you need to consider when putting your proposal together, as well as questions you should address in the text of the proposal itself. How to manage IP in FP7 during the negotiation stage highlights issues that consortia should bear in mind during negotiation of grant agreements with the EC once a proposal has been lucky enough to have been selected for funding. ‘How to manage IP in FP7 during and after the project’ isn’t quite ready yet, but will be published on the IPR website soon!

Professor Kretschmer’s research at the centre of debate by copyright owners & policy makers

Professor Martin Kretschmer’s research into private copying and fair compensation is at the centre of a discussion at an Intellectual Property Office event next week.

‘Informing Copyright Policy in the UK’ takes place on Wednesday 19 October, in partnership with The Big Innovation Centre.

It is an opportunity for copyright owners, technology companies, consumers, academics and policy makers to discuss exactly what Kretschmer’s findings mean for UK policy making.

The influential research paper, entitled ‘Private Copying and Fair Compensation: A comparative study of copyright levies inEurope’, offers the first independent empirical assessment of the European levy system.

The research consolidates evidence on levy setting and collection, as well as reviewing the scope of consumer permissions associated with levy payments. Professor Kretschmer reports the results of three product level studies – printer / scanners, portable music / video / game devices and tablet computers – and analyses the relationship between VAT, levy tariffs and retail prices in 20 levy and non-levy countries.

The other paper up for discussion is ‘Changing Business Models in the Creative Industries: The Cases of Television, Computer Games and Music, by Dr Nicola Searle from theUniversityofAbertay,Dundee.

More information at the event can be found here.

Professor Kretschmer’s key findings:

– There are dramatic differences between countries in the methodology used for identifying leviable media and devices, setting tariffs, and allocating beneficiaries of the levy. These variations cannot be explained by an underlying concept of economic harm to right holders from private copying.

– The scope of consumer permissions under the statutory exceptions for private copying within the EU does not match with what consumers ordinarily understand as private activities.

– In levy countries, the costs of levies as an indirect tax are not always passed on to the consumer. In competitive markets, such as those for printers, manufacturers of levied goods appear to absorb the levy. There appears to be a pan-European retail price range for many consumer devices regardless of levy schemes (with the exception ofScandinavia).

– In non-levy countries, such as theUK, a certain amount of private copying is already priced into retail purchases. For example, right holders have either explicitly permitted acts of format shifting, or decided not to enforce their exclusive rights. Commercial practice will not change as a result of introducing a narrowly conceived private copying exception.

– A more widely conceived exception that would cover private activities that take place in digital networks (such as downloading for personal use, or noncommercial adaptation and distribution within networks of friends) may be best understood not as an exception but as a statutory licence. Such a licence could include state regulated payments with levy characteristics as part of a wider overhaul of the copyright system, facilitating the growth of new digital services.

Links

Professor Martin Kretschmer’s academic profile

More publications by Professor Martin Kretschmer

CIPPM: Recent policy reports