More Monopoly Madness: UK Criminalizes The Copying Of Registered Designs
from the exactly-wrong dept
One of the reasons that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was opposed and defeated in 2012 was that it included an attempt to require criminal sanctions for "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale" (pdf), where "on a commercial scale" was so loosely defined that it risked applying to even trivial infractions. This is part of a continuing push around the world to bring in harsher penalties for infringements of intellectual monopolies, particularly in the realm of copyright.
It seems that even the more obscure domains are affected: the Comparative Patent Remedies blog has a post about new legislation in the UK that criminalizes the copying of registered designs. Written by Professor Sarah Burstein of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, the post is highly critical of the move, and takes apart the claimed reasons for bringing in this new law. In particular, she demolishes the "parity" argument -- that criminal penalties are available for copyright infringement, and so they should be for registered design infringement too. As Burstein points out:
Different IP rights are supposed to protect different things for different reasons; therefore, it is not at all unfair or illogical to provide for different remedies. The parity argument also appears to assume that criminal sanctions for copyright and trademark infringement are appropriate and well-justified -- something that is by no means clearly established.
After addressing the other supposed justifications for criminalization, Burstein concludes as follows:
overall, the addition of these new criminal sanctions to UK law appears to be an ill-advised and unfortunate development. As many opponents (who included UK companies, IP practitioners and IP professors) noted, there is a significant risk that these sanctions will chill legitimate design innovation.
In other words, extreme measures supposedly brought in to support the design industry and its creativity may end up damaging it.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: acta, commercial scale, copying, registered designs, trademark, uk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
But as long as people ignorantly "believe" they are in a free market, then it does not matter what type of market we have.
The idiots, regardless of political ideology, walk amongst us in the majority and they vote!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
FIFY
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I am pretty sure this only applies if you are making counterfeit commercial scales and this is a HUGE problem.
Counterfeit commercial scales are causing all kinds of things to be weighed and sold improperly. I recently bought a 14 ounce container of mixed nuts the other day and I am positive it only had 13 ounces in it.
We need to support this, or you too could find yourself lacking nuts.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
commercial scale
With personal devices capable of storing tens of thousands of songs and thousands of movies, now even personal copying can easily land you in the "commercial scale" territory for criminal prosecution. Heck, a physical commercial music store only carries thousands of songs - the same scale as our laptops and soon-to-be phones. The "commercial scale" language was added specifically to target personal copying on personal devices, despite its devious "commercial" language.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
okay, i'll be the dumb one in class...
hell, i've been on this site for years, and simply by osmosis have picked up a lot of the lingo and legalese, but i don't recall seeing what a 'registered design' is ...
is that some britishism for a registered trademark, or something else entirely ? ? ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: okay, i'll be the dumb one in class...
It is a type-o. They mean a 'register design'. I think this is all about point of sale systems.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
lol
Just goes to show, these industries know very little about the internet and how it works and are doing things that will only hurt themselves, and they deserve everything that is coming their way, which includes no profits or possibly no income at all.
The same as the content and copyright maximalists have destroyed the music industry to a large extent and are encouraging people that have never shared content online to do so. Everyone has warned them that if they do not give the customers what they want the customers will move to someone who gives them what they want...and it is free.
They lost the opportunity to monetise the internet and now have no chance of doing so, they need to start with something that is almost free, say a subscription to download drm free and recent movies/tv shows for less than $10 per month with all content on one site. Damn many people now will not even pay that so they may have to rely on advertising and give all content ever created free of charge to attract pirates.
this silly law is gong to do something similar, where some will use it and others will not, those that do not will make huge amounts of sales and those that enforce it will lose everyone they have as customers now to other institutes selling very similar items.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: lol
The story(mostly), in four articles:
How Dare Google Send Belgian News Sites Traffic! Court Orders Them To Stop
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060918/020228.shtml
Newspapers Win Suit Against Google, Get Their Wish To Be Delisted, Then Complain
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/04055115139/newspapers-win-suit-against-google-ge t-their-wish-to-be-delisted-then-complain.shtml
Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110718/16394915157/belgian-newspapers-give-permission-to- google-to-return-them-to-search-results.shtml
Belgian Newspapers Agree To Drop Lawsuit Over Google News After Google Promises To Show Them How To Make Money Online
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121213/08013521375/belgian-newspapers-agree-to-drop-lawsui t-over-google-news-after-google-promises-to-show-them-how-to-make-money-online.shtml
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NEWS JUST IN
[ link to this | view in chronology ]