Taylor Wessing's attempt to discredit CI's IP Watch List backfires

Law firm Taylor Wessing’s description of its Global's IP Index (GIPI) is highly misleading and its criticism of the Consumer Focus UK survey (which forms part of the 16 country Consumers International IP Watch list) unfounded. Whereas the Consumers International IP Watch List makes no bones about being an index of consumer-friendliness, Taylor Wessing wrongly describes the GIPI as taking into account consumer and producer perspectives, and therefore being more objective.  We strongly disagree with this assessment.

The GIPI is prepared by a commercial law firm, whose clients are IP owners.  The data is drawn from a questionnaire directed to IP owners and their advisors.  The only supposed "balance" in the GIPI comes through the fact that Taylor Wessing examined the ease with which IP claims can be challenged in court.  How many consumers challenge IP rights in court? Consumers International’s longstanding work in this field suggest very few indeed.

To be truly balanced, the GIPI would at least have to look at the scope and breadth of limitations and exceptions to IP rights.  By contrast the Consumers International IP Watch List is far more balanced in that it does not (as Taylor Wessig claims) only consider the scope of "fair use" defences, but also includes a broad range of other factors including:

• The length of copyright protection 
• The impact of other laws on competition and human rights 
• The use of open access licensing to make content more widely available 
• Whether compulsory licences are available for certain purposes 
• The quantum of penalties and the use of criminal sanctions 
• The behaviour of copyright collecting agencies 

Taylor Wessing can rightly promote the GIPI as an index of how well IP laws work for businesses.  But it is misleading for the law firm to claim more balance than the Consumers International IP Watch List, when in fact the GIPI has nothing at all to say about how well IP laws serve the interests of consumers.