Hargreaves out of the long grass and onto the fairway?

Earlier in the year I posted about the implications of the Hargreaves review of intellectual property on format shifting and the irony that if this was enacted it would likely arrive just as services like Apple's iCloud start to make the format shifting debate a thing of the past.

It has been widely reported (and indeed leaked) that the government have adopted all 10 of the recommendations in the Hargreaves report, which means that we can look forward to an exemption to restrictions on format shifting for personal use and also the creation of a digital copyright exchange by the end of 2012.

The site blocking proposals in the Digital Economy Act have also been postponed on the advice of OFCOM.

One other proposal which I haven't seen discussed much is that the IPO will be setting out plans later in the year to improve accesibility of the IP system for SMEs (a welcome development) including facilitating

access to lower cost providers of integrated IP legal and commercial advice

I'm not clear at this stage whether these are likely to be commercial providers or Business Link style organisations, but it will be interesting to see how this develops. Presumably this could be a fruitful area for new ABS providers once this regime comes into force?

In my previous post I expressed some cycnicism as to whether the Hargreaves recommendations were likely to see the light of day, and it is encouraging to see them being adopted so enthusiastically and applied to issues like 3D printing which will be hot issues over the coming years.

There is a long road to travel still (in particular I wonder whether the Digital Copyright Exchange will go the way of so many other government IT projects), but it is good to see the government taking intellectual property seriously.