New strategy for intangible assets to break down silos in government offices

The government announced today that it is changing the model for how intellectual property policy is prepared and executed within the Government Offices. The expert committees will remain in place, but will be supplemented by a working group. This will bring together expertise from the Ministry of Justice (which owns the intellectual property issues), the Ministry of Industry (business and digitalization policy), the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Finance (consumer perspective) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (internal market) to co-prepare intellectual property proposals based on the expertise needed.

The fact that the government has chosen to focus on organization and method is a major step forward that shows insight into the problem and good will, and creates the conditions for the necessary and socially beneficial change in intellectual property law that digitalization requires.

Anyone who has worked in the Government Offices knows that there have been many and invisible barriers between ministries. This has been noticed not least by those of us who work with digitalisation and other issues that span many policy areas. For example, getting the Constitutional Law Unit at the Ministry of Justice to consider the socio-economic potential of the data-driven economy in addition to the legal aspects is a challenge, to say the least. The main reason for this has not been a lack of will or ambition on the part of the department's staff, but that the expertise is deep rather than broad. Expertise is, of course, necessary, but it is not necessarily the same as a narrow approach. Those who do not open up to a broader perspective easily get stuck in preconceived notions and accepted truths.

This has been more than clear when it comes to copyright in the digital environment. To take one example: that the root of online piracy is mainly a lack of supply and not malicious consumers is something most people have long been convinced of. Yet we have not been able to more than marginally adapt the availability, management and protection of rights to the completely new type of market that follows a different logic.

Legal developments over the last 20 years, if they can even be called developments, have almost completely ignored the potential of the internet-driven market revolution and totally over-focused on its risks. This is often due to an overly narrow and traditional understanding of the market. Today, our media consumption has been essentially commoditized and distribution digitized, while the view of the copy has remained unchanged and the legislation with it. To the detriment of consumers, rights holders and industry at large.

Today's announcement on collaboration is therefore a welcome step in the right direction. One message to the government is to follow this up by investigating which other horizontal issues may require increased joint preparation within the government offices. One area that would be particularly appropriate is the protection of personal integrity. Data protection issues are absolutely central to the data-driven economy, to the digitization of the public sector and, by extension, to the digitization of society as a whole.

A similar cooperation group for data protection issues would be very useful and much appreciated!