Inventor Urges Criminalization Of IP Infringement In UK

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

08 September 2009

Famed British inventor, Trevor Baylis, creator of the wind-up radio has called for patent infringement to be treated as a "white collar crime" in a letter to UK Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson.

According to reports, Mr Bayliss compared the theft of intellectual property to the theft of a valuable tangible asset, such as a car, and argued that the current state of affairs -- whereby an inventor must sue the allegedly infringing party in order to protect his or her IP, rather than being automatically protected by the law -- is untenable for many inventors and entrepreneurs, especially when they are obliged to defend themselves against deep-pocketed corporate infringers.

However, Mr Baylis' proposal that intellectual property infringement become a criminal, rather than a civil, matter has been criticised by some, who argue that infringement by other small businesses may take place inadvertently, and that it can prove prohibitively expensive for such businesses to investigate all existing patents before going ahead with the development of a product.

Warning of the likelihood of "unwelcome -- and unintended -- consequences" were such a shift in IP enforcement to take place, Alasdair Poore, vice president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) argued that:

“It’s nothing like as clear-cut as, for example, making illicit copies of a DVD and selling them at a car boot sale. It is perfectly possible to infringe someone else’s patent inadvertently. In some cases, you would have to check many thousands of patents to see if any of them might apply to something you have just invented. And if even if you find something, it isn’t always clear that the earlier patent is valid, or that it covers the type of application you have in mind.”

The CIPA has argued that a planned reform of the Patents County Court system is likely to address the cost factor flagged up by Mr Baylis, making it cheaper and easier for inventors to defend their intellectual property, and the UK Business Secretary seems inclined to agree, announcing, according to the BBC, that:

"Issues concerning patents can be highly complex, and so they are best dealt with in civil courts where the appropriate expertise lies and where financial compensation can be claimed. Lord Justice Jackson is currently carrying out a review of civil litigation and looking at ways of reducing its costs."

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