The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) has called
the move a "stride in the right direction" and said that the move
was consistent with Brown's attitude to IP as Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
"Gordon Brown took the initiative to commission the Gowers
Review of intellectual property when he was Chancellor,’ said CIPA
president Bob Weston. ‘It’s encouraging to see that, now he’s
Prime Minister, he’s continuing to implement Andrew Gowers’
recommendations. The UK’s international leadership in IP is
fundamental to the encouragement and commercial development of
innovation. Bringing IP out of the DTI and giving innovation its
own minister is a stride in the right direction."
The secretary of state for innovation, universities and skills
is John Denham, a former junior minister who resigned from
government in 2003 in protest at the invasion of Iraq. Denham is a
science graduate of Southampton University.
The UK IP Office, which was until recently called the Patent
Office, will fall under the control of the new department.
Another new minister in Brown's government is Sir Digby Jones, a
former director general of the Confederation of British Industry
(CBI), the UK's main business lobby group. A flamboyant and
sometimes controversial figure, Jones has been made minister for
trade promotion.
CIPA has encouraged Jones to put pressure on his colleagues to
create a dedicated minister for intellectual property, something he
called for just last year. In 2006 Jones said that "if the
Government is committed to an enterprise economy, as it
consistently claims to be, it should appoint a Minister for IP – as
knowledge is becoming increasingly vital to the future success of
the UK economy".
"CIPA urges [Jones] to take up the mantle of promoting the UK’s
strengths in IP to the rest of the world and to continue to put
pressure on his new ministerial colleague, John Denham," said
Weston.
