Comment

It hardly needs to be said that intellectual property (IP) is big business. As Professor Ian Hargreaves reported last year in an independent report commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron on how the IP framework supports growth and innovation: "Every year in the last decade, investment by UK business in intangible assets has outstripped investment in tangible assets: by ??137bn to ??104bn in 2008. Global trade in IP licences alone is worth more than ??600bn a year: 5 per cent of world trade and rising."