Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property

Written evidence submitted by the Wellcome Trust

 

Summary

The Wellcome Trust strongly supports the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property to update the UK’s copyright legislation and to address the barriers it creates for research and innovation. We are calling on the Government to implement these much-needed reforms without delay.

1. The Wellcome Trust is pleased to respond to the BIS Committee’s call for evidence on the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property. We are a major funder of biomedical research, dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health, and we also provide the Wellcome Library – one of the world’s foremost resources for research and understanding on the history of medicine. It is therefore of vital importance to us that the UK’s intellectual property framework supports researchers in maximising the value of published outputs to advance knowledge and its application to improve health.

2. In this light, we are fully supportive of the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review in relation to reform of the UK’s copyright legislation. We agree with the review team’s conclusion that copyright provisions have failed to keep pace with developments in the digital age, and are now serving to inhibit potentially valuable avenues of research and innovation.

3. In particular, we strongly endorse the call for an exception in copyright legislation to enable text and data mining in the context of non-commercial research. We believe that through the use of these tools researchers will be able to generate vital new insights from the huge wealth of valuable information contained in published works – stimulating discovery and its application to generate new health and economic benefits.

4. We also strongly support the Review’s conclusions in relation to orphan works – which are essentially locked from use because rights holders cannot be located. We believe that the development of a system to enable access to these potentially valuable resources under license is long overdue. The Government has already signalled its intention to address this problem in the Plan for Growth published in March 2011.

5. In addition, we welcome other key recommendations of the Hargreaves review – in particular:

- the introduction of other key exceptions to copyright – including format shifting and copying in the context of library archiving;

- the adoption of legislation to ensure that valid exceptions to copyright cannot be overridden through contracts;

- the formation of a digital rights exchange – which should simplify the processes of identifying rights holders.

6. In relation to this final point, the Wellcome Library is currently working with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Publishers Licencing Society (PLS) to identify rights holders for printed works so that permission can be sought to digitise their works and make them freely available on the Internet. Although this example is format specific (i.e. printed works), it provides an example of a working system that aims to simplify the process of identifying rights holders.

7. In light of our strong support for the Review’s recommendations, we were very pleased that the Government accepted all of the key proposals in its August 2011 response. We look forward to seeing the detailed proposals for the extension of copyright exceptions and for a new orphan works scheme that the Government will publish in the Autumn. We hope that the Government

will move thereafter to implement these much-needed measures as rapidly as possible, and that the BIS Committee will support reforms to the copyright system that are required to ensure that the UK is able to grasp new opportunities for research and innovation in the digital age.

6 September 2011