Creative Britain's future depends on not giving away copyright. Right.

1319935 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:38:00 GMT

The Creative Britain debate rages. Well, sort of. Thanks to the IPA for an intriguing debate last night about the ‘new improved’ knowledge economy. A distinguished panel of Peter York, Moray McLennan, Will Hutton and a nice lady called Christine from the design industry talking about copyright as our commercial future, and new interest and energy on the subject from the government which has suddenly realised that our other forms of exports are suddenly screwed. For those of you that saw the launch in Golden Square, it’s a great initiative, but I worry that the commercial premise needs a little more thought.

The debate, whilst witty enough, studiously ignored two fundamentals. One, the Chinese economy, soon to be the largest in the world, represents a billion new capitalists with a different point of view on copyright laws. Competing on the world stage will be tougher. Two, the ad agency business, in general, hands over all copyright to its clients. Intellectual property will be a new battleground for agencies to learn about. We do support the copyright of our supply chain, as it happens, with image rights and usage rights and so on, but give away our own ideas on the basis of monetising the upfront advice in the form of fees and charges over production.

In my own company we do ideas and make stuff, but we also develop software. This makes us an unusual combination, but a useful one in this context. Years of experience of warranty on the applications we develop (those now ever so trendy brand utilities) and code libraries that (in theory at least!) help us sustain new product at a commercially viable rate. I think all the digital agencies do this to some extent, but as we have to compete on the world stage, we’re all going to have to get a bit more serious about this.

PS Loved the definition “Intangibles are fluff, tangibles are stuff.”

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Creative Britain's future depends on not giving away copyright. Right.