The Hargreaves Report and Copyright Licensing: Can national initiatives work per se?

Abstract

In May 2011 Prof. Hargreaves published his review of intellectual property and growth entitled Digital Opportunity, which had been commissioned by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron. The Hargreaves Report is focused primarily on copyright, which is deemed to have fallen apart from what is needed to promote innovation and competitiveness.1 The Report therefore contains a series of recommendations to improve the quality of UK copyright law and make it fit for the digital age. It advises the UK Government to consider reforming--inter alia--copyright licensing and introducing a digital copyright exchange and extended collecting licensing for orphan works, as well as promoting a single EU market for content licensing. The objectives relating to the reform of copyright licensing are ambitious, in that the relevant recommendations are thought to enormously favour UK competitiveness, if implemented. The present contribution questions whether this can actually be the case in the absence of a stable EU framework for licensing.