Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-105)
HIS HONOUR
JUDGE FYSH
QC SC, MR IAN
FLETCHER, MR
EDMUND QUILTY
AND MR
ANDREW LAYTON
28 JANUARY 2008
Q100 Chairman: Ian, what is your
gravestone going to say on it about what you have done about this
whole Copyright Tribunal.
Mr Fletcher: Our intention is
to look at amending the Tribunal's remit to respond to current
copyright challenges, something we have started to talk about
this evening. I do not think the Copyright Tribunal is or has
ever been failing but I think it has ended up the victim of the
cases which have been brought to it which have been big gun cases
and as a result of their complications and expense they have given
it an unfair perception that it was unwieldy and hard to get access
to.
Q101 Chairman: So you will be the
man who radicalises the Copyright Tribunal, will you?
Mr Fletcher: I hope at the end
of a year or so the Tribunal will be taking on a wider range of
cases and I hope that that perception which, as I say, is unfair
will have gone away. I hope that will be part of a process that
government will have been involved in to ensure that the whole
copyright framework is fit for purpose. I think that is the important
agenda that we have.
Q102 Chairman: Professor Lessig in
his very interesting paper to us did a chronology of the history
of the Copyright Tribunal and in his last paragraph he said, "Copyright
designed to benefit authors, if allowed to become too powerful,
becomes the tool of monopolies and again we ask the question does
copyright have limits and if it does not have limits who should
decide them?" I just wondered what your response to that
was.
Mr Fletcher: All intellectual
property rights should have boundaries. Patents, designs, trade
marks, copyright are all legal monopolies granted in different
circumstances and like any monopoly there should be a very clear
"bargain" between the state granting the monopoly and
the beneficiary. That means those boundaries are really important
for the good functioning of the economy. Who should determine
the rules? That is Parliament; there is no question about that.
This is a legislative question. The role of the Tribunal is to
look at individual disputes within an established framework of
law and then say on the facts of a particular case where the boundary
is. It is important that we recognise that this is a central function
of the state.
Q103 Chairman: Given the digital
age questions we asked earlier, do you feel that Parliament should
revisit this?
Mr Fletcher: That is for ministers
to look at.
Q104 Chairman: What do you think?
Mr Fletcher: I think that the
volume of debate and public interest about copyright in the Gowers
recommendations that the Government is already taking forward—orphan
works is a good example—the sheer volume of correspondence
the Government is getting now suggests to my mind that that debate
has actually started.
Q105 Chairman: When was the Gowers
Report published?
Mr Fletcher: December 2006.
Chairman: Thank you. Can I thank you
very, very much indeed for coming along and being lucid and clear
and amusing at the same time, and for sharing with us your frustrations
but also the work you are putting in behind the scenes. Whether
or not we will have a report will depend on our subsequent meeting,
but we thank you very, very much for opening up a lot of the avenues
for us. A very clear picture has been given in that there are
no straight solutions but certainly we have got over some of the
problems which we did not when we first came. Thank you very much
for your time.
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