Given the confusion surrounding the latest legislation to come into force in the UK and particularly around text and data mining, ALPSP sought some clarification from the UK Intellectual Property Office, via the IP Minister, Viscount Younger of Leckie.

We posed a number of scenarios in order to attempt to figure out what the UK Government actually intended with their legislation, as it was not actually written in to the statutory instrument. In fact, the legislation was so unclear that in addition to an Explanatory Memorandum, the Government also produced a series of Guidance Notes to help everyone try and figure out what they can and cannot actually do.

The letter sent and the response received can be found here .

Of course, there is a bit of 'fence-sitting' but what is useful is that it notes that publishers can direct users to a machine-readable version of their content, as long as that content is the same as is available to the user via their subscription.

The timeline of the Government's implementation of the last round of many review of copyright legislation can be found here.

Audrey McCulloch
Chief Executive

Changes to UK copyright legislation  
Guidance Notes 
Letter to IPO and response   
Copyright review implementation timeline and related documents