#IPstudy #LSE #OHIM

3. Studies on Intellectual Property Released & IP Infringements Observatory Meeting

Why is this relevant?

Albeit to different extents, such studies occupy public and political debates and help shape the narratives of the debates. With copyright being seeded as one of the first major reform initiatives of the next Commission in 2014, the current  back and forth will set the starting points of the expected consultation and stakeholder dialogue.

What happened?

The European Commission has founded an European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights to “understand the challenges” and “enhance cooperation” in the field of counterfeiting and piracy. [1] As part of the initiative it has commissioned a study on the Contribution of Intellectual Property to the Economy, that it plans to update every two years. This study claims that 50% of the EU economy is “IPR intensive”. [2] In a strange coincidence, the same week this study was released, the London School of Economics released their own research, stating that there is no proof online file-sharing is hurting the industry. [3]

What comes next?

As the Commission has been criticised for having only industry associations in the IPR Infringements Observatory they took the step to invite several civil society organisations to their yearly plenary in Alicante - namely European Digital Rights (EDRi), the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and us. At the two-day meeting me and Nikolas Becker (WMDE board member) requested that a complementary study on the contribution of open licensing and the public domain to the European economy be commissioned and that the observatory needs to start taking into account infringements on free licenses and the copyfraud cases. EDRi stated that it isn’t enough to just produce studies on how many people are downloading illegal content, but that future studies will need to explain what the motivation behind such actions is.