Last month William Miles of Briffa, one of ACID’s Legal Affiliates represented members at a recent meeting with Department of International Trade officials to discuss IP issues which will affect future trade negotiations. Here is his summary of the meeting:

–              An overview of the types of evidence that are most valuable to support the UK’s IP trade policy (this was useful as it was not specific to copyright/patents – the advice was to ensure consultation replies (1) contain a clear opinion on the proposal, (2) set out the expected impact, and (3) explain why your conclusion has been reached. Facts and figures should be included wherever possible with the raw data being provided as well as your own conclusions. Answer should start with a summary of the response and any working assumptions for data analysis should be included. Apparently, the IPO has some useful guidance on this and respondents should refer to that before replying).

–              Breakout session: The Copyright sections of a Free Trade Agreement (“FTA”) IP chapter (I was in this breakout session and we discussed issues such as safe harbour provisions, data mining, copyright term, Technological Protection Measures, Rights Management Information, broadcasting and communications to the public and collective management rights. Generally, the idea was to ensure that the high standards of copyright law that we have in the UK were not diminished by entering into these FTAs, this was considered to be an issue as many of the countries we discussed, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and the USA had worse, or less compatible systems.).

–             Future proofing of IP trade policy (the Department’s view was that future proofing was key as they would be negotiating FTAs next year which will not come into force for another 5 years. By that time, technology would have changed, and they do not want to have to immediately start negotiating new FTAs on different terms to account for this. However, the view of some stakeholders was to be cautious about introducing new IP “fads” (e.g. safe harbour provisions and some areas of pharma patent law) which could create new issues which were previously unforeseen. They said instead that the focus should be on getting the basics right. Generally, we talked about emerging technologies and we identified areas such as fintech, 3D printing (which is obviously very relevant to ACID’s members) and driverless cars.

Generally – DIT indicated that this was the second meeting of this group (the first meeting covered enforcement) and they said that they intend to hold further meetings on a semi-regular basis (suggesting there would be “several” each year). The meeting was made up of stakeholders (i.e. ACID), about 8 civil servants from the Department of Trade and about 8 bods from the IPO (all of whom seemed to know their stuff and were very keen to hear the feedback). If you can get into a room with these people to discuss designs I really do think they will take on board what you have to say and will use this to influence the drafting of future FTAs (although, just to be clear, they can’t change any current UK laws, only the deals we do with other countries, also, Brexit was very much avoided as the discussions focused around non-EU trade agreements).