The UK has relatively strong laws covering copyright, patents and trademarks. Many of these laws are ambiguous and have been challenged in court. As with many other nations whose legal code is based on English common law many of these ambiguities must be dealt with by either new legislation or case law.

 For the UK both of these legal mechanisms are how the UK government is dealing with the copyright protection of software. The UK has the lowest software piracy rate in Europe rate at 26% in 1999. Although this was a loss of about $700,000 to both US software and other software firms. The average rate of piracy in Western Europe is about 34% in 1999 with the total amount of loss to software firms at about $3,629,371.[1]

 Although the UK has one of the lowest rates of software piracy their copyright laws and how they are interruptered by the courts have left large gaps. One of these is that the British courts have upheld decisions that reverse engineering is legal. Another area they are lacking in is enforcement but their regional governments are getting tough on these types of violations. This is has happened because of the lobbying efforts of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) which is a Western European organization that is trying to have copyright laws enforced throughout Europe. This watchdog group is similar to its US counterpart the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

 The next area of intellectual property law that technology has challenged is trademark law. This has happened because at the beginning of the Internet many people or organizations were buying up spaces with names that were trademarked. This has been called Cybersquatting. At the start-up of the Internet the UK updated their trademark law to protect against the Cybersquatting. This law has been upheld by the courts. Also the UK has members on Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and has fully supported their decision on naming conventions. However, there has been some dissention between this organization on their naming conventions, specifically between the uk.co extension and .com as it is in the US.

 The UK over the last 3 years has had one of the lowest rate of software piracy in Western Europe. There highest rate was in 1997 at 31% and has dropped to 26% in 1999. This has caused losses in the software industry of $335,000 in 1997 to about $700, 000 in 1999. This shows that even through the rate has declined there is still substantial loss to the software firms. In Western Europe, the average rate of software priracy was about 34% in 1999 with the loss of about $3,600,000, [2] due to many of the copyright laws not being enforced or the not being clear.

The UK’s success in keeping their software piracy rate low is due to the fact that they have strong laws on the books. They also adhere to international copyright regulations set out by the WTO. Yet, there is a lot of gray areas in copyright law that lead to software piracy. One area is reverse engineering, where a company takes software apart to figure out the code and repackages it and sells it at a lower price. The next area is individuals or companies copying software without  the proper license.

The area of software reengineering is considered by the BSA to be software piracy. They feel that the stealing of the idea as well as pieces of the code is a violation of copyright. They believe that the company that develops the software should have the full benefits and full protection against their competitors copying their code. Many businesses in England are in a hurry to have their copyrights and patents in place in hopes of protecting themselves from reverse engineering. In 1999, there were around 100,000 intellectual property right inquiries were made at the UK Patent office for software and other IT related technologies.[3]

This number according to the BSA is beginning to decline because of a high court ruling in the UK that they felt has become close to legalizing reengineering. This high court ruling has overturned the assumption that companies can rely on confidentiality to stop other’s copying  encrypted software programs and other embedded technology. This ruling has the implication that if a company decrypts or finds information on the base code of the competitors software they now have rights to it. Many feel that this gives  unfair advantages to large companies over small to midsize firms, since the legal fees to prove who designed the software first would be too big to bear for a small firm. Also, this in some way weakens copyright protection. Basically the courts are saying if base code is well hidden and cannot be copied but if it is they will not let the developing  company enforce its copyright or patent easily. The BSA is trying to get Parliament and the EU to draft strong legislation for protection against this type of copyright violation.[4]  This is because of the emergence of Internet technology like ASP that will become increasingly more used as the vehicle for distributing software. It is also believed that this technology has the potential of making code more accessible to be copied.

The next area of software piracy that the BSA and others are trying to fight is licensing violators. This occurs when individuals or organizations only buy a license for one person and then share it with others without purchasing more licenses. In the UK, they have the lowest amount of this than any other country in Europe.  Even though they have a low rate of piracy there is still a far amount going on. To try to stop this type of piracy, many organizations are starting audits of their systems to find unlicensed software. The UK through their court system is trying to enforce copyright laws.

The UK’s regional governments started this trend of audits in 1998. One of these audits was of  all of the regional school districts in the UK.  In this audit they found that 40% of schools nationwide were running illicit copies of software.[5]  It is not only the government that is finding they had not purchased the proper software licenses but audits are finding that large corporation like Reuters Ltd are involved.  Reuters case is unique in the fact that it is being argued not only in England but also in the US. All-Media-Typlan AG claims that it only licensed the use of their software for the Reuters US operations.  Reuters uses the software not only in the US but also in the UK.  There is now a huge lawsuit against Reuters in these two countries that has not been resolved either in the US or in the UK.[6]

Many of these types of piracy issues are being addressed by the WTO and EU. The WTO and other world organizations has created an international copyright standard the UK has agreed too at the Berne Convention.  The current UK copyright law gives all right to the author or creator of a piece of material. Sine they have agreed to the convention a British citizen’s copyright should be upheld in all countries that have signed the Berne convention.  Also the UK follows the EU standards of copyright now being created in the EU commission.  The EU has released (EC) No(48/2000) which is the current [7] draft of the EU directive on copyright.  This directive is still being drafted.  It too will reflect both WTO and the Berne Convention. It is an attempt to harmonize each of the member states copyright laws.[8]

One EU standard is that the software that comes through customs can be checked for proper licensing. Although this is a new problem for the UK because they have one of loosest customs law in Europe. The Parliament is trying to change those features in their custom laws. [9]  This is another way the EU and it members are trying to stop software piracy.

Domain Name Issues and Cybersquatting:
Domain Name Issues:

The UK and the US share English basically as their common language. (There a still difference in the language but for the most part they are similar enough that each can easily understand on another.)  This has been an advantage to the UK but also a disadvantage to them on the Internet. One area of controversy is in the naming of domains. Before the ICANN and before there was much discussion on how the naming of different country’s sites on the Internet was done, the UK was being issued .com sites. This changed in the latter 1990’s to. co.uk extensions. Some of the companies that already had the .com domain did not want to change their sites. This has become an issue with the UK and ICANN. Many expect that this issue will become more complicated with the three new top level domains (TLDs) that were recently announced. There are many experts feel that these new domains will not ease the problem of TLDs but make it more complicated.

 This is one of the reasons that the ICANN has some British professionals on their board. It is hoped that they can work with ICANN to straighten this issue out. This is somewhat unique issue with the UK since it too was on the net quickly but it is the fact they share the English language with the US that also creates this problem. There is a larger demand in the UK for .com and not .co.uk. The UK would like the US to adopt .co.us and not just .com. There is still no resolution of this and right now US and multinational firms are still getting  .com and smaller or just UK are getting .co.uk. [10]

Cybersquatting has become a serious issue for many companies and countries. It is when a person buys a domain name that could be considered a trademark of a company. This is a problem that UK has been facing but the UK has a strong history of upholding trademark claims. One example of this is the 1994 United Kingdom Trademark Act where a company can register a trademark in the category of telecommunications or other intellectual property arena. The law was designed to protect companies against trademark infringement in messages through the use of telecommunications. [11]  Part of the reason that the UK had update is Trademark law was to be in compliance with the EU’s Trademark directive, No. 89/104/Eec.. This directive made the UK strengthen its trademark protections which were much weaker. [12]  Also, this piece of legislation provides the UK’s adherence to the WTO’s Trade Related Aspects of International Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) which allows for countries that adhere to these principals to protect the trademarks of foreign companies. The UK follows this treaty and is a proponent of it.
 

The UK courts have decided that the 1994 trademark act can be defined in a way that companies can use it to protect against cybersquatting. In 1997, the high court in the UK heard the case Harrods v Larrie Daily Telegraph. Here Lawire registered the domain of Harrods.co.uk.  This company fully had the intension of selling the domain to Harrods.  It was found that this violated the trade mark of Harrods and the domain had to returned to Harrods with no profits going to Lawrie. [13]  This is one example of the many cases that have been tested in the UK court system and thus far all have been found for the trademark holder.  Many legal experts feel that as long as a company or corporation has the means they will win in court against cybersquatters.  Yet if the company does not have the means a cybersquatter can take a trademark.

Conclusions on Intellectual Property in the UK:

 In general the UK has some of the most stringent copyright laws of any Western European nation. The fact that they have the lowest piracy rate in Western Europe shows the strength of their laws. Yet more can be done, there still is a fair amount of software piracy  in the UK that goes unreported. Also there is serious discussion going on with small software firms and the BSA to try getting more protection against reverse engineering in the UK.  They have a unique domain issue with the dispute about the TLD being co.uk and not .com although now it seems that the UK will still have co.uk plus the new ones to choose from. They also have representatives on the ICANN executive board to make high-level decisions on TLDs. This along with their very strong trademark laws have made it hard for cybersquatters to profit on gaining domain names before a company gets them. Again this only occurs if the company is a large with lots of means. It is unknown, if these court decisions will allow smaller companies to fend off cybersquatters. Although there is more to be done, the UK has some rather strong protections of intellectual property rights.
 

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