A voice for Intellectual Property: the Alliance for IP

The Alliance for Intellectual Property has been campaigning to ensure the UK values Intellectual Property rights for over 25 years. Our mission is to establish a strong legislative and regulatory framework that safeguards innovation and creativity, along with effective mechanisms to enforce these protections. We now have over 23 representative bodies as members, representing sectors that are vital to our economy and society including publishing, image, design, news media, retailing, audiovisual, visual arts, music, toy and games, business software, and more.

A Strong Framework and Ongoing Policy Influence

The UK has an enviable copyright framework internationally, the strength and stability of which is often cited as a key basis for inward investment. Similarly, the UK court system is seen as hugely valuable in arbitration in IP cases. The digital phenomenon of the last 25 years has clearly brought many new challenges in tackling piracy, and while business models and licensing have had to adapt, it’s a testament to the strength of the UK legislative framework that copyright has been flexible enough to accommodate digital challenges without having to revolutionise.

Since its inception, the Alliance has sought to influence these debates. We successfully campaigned to ensure penalties for digital piracy were equal to those in the physical world. We fought off challenges that sought to bring US approaches to the use of copyright to the UK and provided for new mechanisms to use court orders to enable internet service providers to block access to pirate sites. We also campaigned to introduce new regulation to prevent advertising on pirate sites and helped create a central enforcement body in the Police and Intellectual Property Crime Unit, based in the City of London Police. We have also ensured that IP is at the core of the Government’s creative industries strategy and broader industrial strategy, given both its domestic size but also the enormous exports it provides.

Brexit, Trade Negotiations, and Future Challenges

Brexit gave the UK the power to negotiate our own trade agreements. With most creative industries being tariff free, at least in the digital environment, the opportunity to use these trade negotiations to improve IP protection in those countries with which we are negotiating is significant. Those negotiations include the opportunity to promote the Artist Resale Right which, without an international treaty, is the only means to enshrine this hugely important right in third countries. Through those negotiations, British artists will now benefit when their art is resold in both Australia and New Zealand, and the Government has made numerous commitments to prioritise the issue in other negotiations.

Each new era brings about new opportunities but also challenges. Under this new Parliament, we have new Ministers and hundreds of new MPs to convince of the importance of IP.

A vital issue in the years ahead is the interaction between AI and the copyright framework. We need to ensure that AI developers respect the rights of creators and human creativity remains at the core of copyright, whilst also ensuring the power of AI as a tool in assisting that human creativity is exploited. In these circumstances, there are often calls to review the whole copyright framework and to reduce copyright protection. History suggests that isn’t necessary and while some regulatory changes might be required, for example, to ensure there is transparency of the works ingested by AI developers or some codification of image and personality rights, there is no need to fundamentally change what has been a constant and flexible IP framework.