Hamlet observed “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how you will.”   When it comes to the UK’s choices in a post EU, Brexit world, it isn’t the Divine, but rather existing international agreements, & the politics and power surrounding them, which will define & constrain what the UK can achieve.   This applies to all industries, for goods and services, although the specifics do of course vary.   We’ll be debating this at the Stationers Hall on November 6 - do come and participate. https://stationers.org/events/event/0/53-events/159-ipso-facto-post-br ..read more

Dear reader As we ease ourselves into 2017, I thought I'd start with a short piece, containing a suggested simple solution to a complex and seemingly intractable problem. We all do it, the legal community included. We want to grab that app, buy that product or service online, download an update, get IT support to gain remote access to our screen etc. Then, up pops that box telling us that before we can get it, we must tick "I accept" with that helpful link to the 30 pages + of terms and conditions to read through before going any further. Need I write more? So here's the answer - rep ..read more

Dear reader I was at E-Commerce Expo this week and went to a session by Renaud Visage, CTO of leading event and ticketing platform EventBrite. He spoke about his '10 learning principles' for start-ups, but they're also very relevant to any business that wants to achieve scale. I thought they were excellent and wanted to share them with you:- Focus on big problems: find something totally broken or which doesn't work as well as it should. The bigger the problem, the higher the chance of success. Be 'scrappy' - be resourceful & thoughtful about your use of resources. Try to automate as muc ..read more

Dear reader I've always liked the word "liminality' - a threshold that marks the boundary between two phases. If nothing else, Brexit presents an opportunity for its appropriate use. The UK's current state, where we are still in the EU but apparently heading somewhere else, does feel liminal, with its quality (to quote Wikipedia) of ambiguity or disorientation. You can sense this in the way the Commission's significant proposals for copyright reform have been greeted in the UK. The Proposals for a Digital Copyright Directive (more on which below) and Regulation on righ ..read more

Dear reader First, apologies for my fairly lengthy radio silence in the blogosphere. I have been focused on my new strategic IP and digital media consultancy which I launched at the beginning of the year. More on that to follow when I launch my new site shortly. Meanwhile, like fellow Remainers, I'm rapidly moving through the five stages of Brexit grief - denial, anger (mostly) and now moving to bargaining. Which brings me to Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which, as I'm sure you know, requires the UK as the departing member state to trigger the procedure by giving notice to the Euro ..read more

Dear reader Yes, it's been a while since I last posted but all that will change in the New Year! Meanwhile, I wanted to share with you a piece I wrote recently for Lexis-Nexis analysing the decision in Hewlett-Packard vs Reprobel which is important for publishers, especially with the upcoming review of copyright by the European Commission next year. You can find it here -   Download Examining fair compensation. I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful Christmas break and a great New Year, and I look forward to being in more regular touch with year next year. Kin ..read more

Dear reader I recently took part in a session at the London Book Fair organised by the Publishers Association on 'Creativity, Internet and Politics'. Chaired by the Publisher Association's CEO Richard Mollett, the panel - me, Simon Milner from Facebook and Tony Burke from Unite - answered two questions: what is the single most exciting opportunity and the single greatest concern posed by the development of the digital economy?"  Reading David Cameron's paeans of praise this week to UK small businesses, and with the forthcoming Election in mind, I thought I'd share my answers with you. &nb ..read more

Dear reader Make no mistake, this year marks the start of the real showdown for copyright law in Europe, alongside parallel debates taking place in the US and elsewhere. The momentum for change in Europe comes from the inclusion of copyright (as well as data protection, telecoms regulation, digital infrastructure et al) as part of Commissioner Oettinger's Digital Single Market Agenda portfolio. You can get the picture from the Commission's Digital Single Market infographic - here - and the words in the Commission's Press Release issued on March 25th here, which se ..read more

Dear reader For as many years as I can remember, my mantra at the beginning of the year has been that "This year, privacy and data protection will be high on the Board agenda." And each year, with a few exceptions, it hasn't. But perhaps 2015 will be different. For instance, there were quite a few comments at Davos about loss of trust in the US consumer technology giants, drawing parallels with the banking industry. For other reasons, privacy and data protection is in the news, as the terrorist attacks in France have brought into focus the rights of the State to intercept and monitor ..read more

Dear reader Apologies for the rather cryptic title of this post which concerns this month's decision of the European Court of Justice in Ryanair Ltd vs PR Aviation BV. This goes back to 2010 and Ryanair's complaint to a Dutch Court about PR Aviation 'scrapping' the Ryanair database. PR Aviation operate a price comparison and booking site for flights, for which purpose it scraped data from the Ryanair website. The case illustrates that in an age of 'machine to machine' communications, contracts and licences may trump intellectual property rights. Ryanair argued before the Dutch Court that ..read more