The Patent office is about to become the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) and in doing so will harmonise the policing of IP infringement.
Will this change make a difference? Well the name may help some focus on ‘intellectual property’ and not just think of inventions and goods. However the issue of fair use still remains. As the Economist John Kay recently noted “If it is legitimate to copy material in terms of the Copyright Act, it should be legitimate to use a digital rights management system to circumvent that exception.”
The issue of treating copyright protection of physical and digital products differently continues not to go away.
