COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 2 November 1988)

§ Lord Strathclyde

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 54. In so doing, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 140 and 143. This group of amendments fulfils a pledge given by my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook to my noble friend Lord Caldecote at Third Reading.

At present the scientific and technical communities are served by a number of abstracting services which scan periodicals from around the world and write or reproduce abstracts of articles of interest appearing in those periodicals. Some of these services are purely commercial, such as Derwent Publications; others are offshoots of learned societies such as the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

The present law does not allow the re-publication of abstracts in the absence of authorisation by the copyright owner. We understand that where authorisation is sought from publishers it is normally given, usually without any request for payment. However, we also understand that in many cases consent is not sought, for practical or other reasons. In that event, the re-publication is, in our view, an infringement of copyright.

Clearly, abstracting services are highly valued by the scientific and technical communities, and it is unsatisfactory that they should be carrying out their activities on a legally uncertain footing. The easy way of meeting their concerns would be simply to provide an exception to copyright allowing re-publication of this kind. We resisted an amendment to this effect when the matter was debated in your Lordships' House but said that we would consider alternative ways of meeting the problem in consultation with publishing interests.

These amendments are the outcome. I believe they fully meet the concerns of those who wished to ensure that copyright does not unduly obstruct abstracting. The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, whose journals and periodicals are among those most likely to be affected, is content to see an exception of this kind, although I cannot say the same for the Publishers Association or the Periodical Publishers Association. We have however taken account of their commercial interests by providing that the exception in subsection (1) allowing re-publication of abstracts will be overridden if there is a licensing system. 252 Consequently, authors and publishers will have the opportunity to obtain remuneration from this secondary use of abstracts if they wish. Conversely they will be relieved of the burden of having to respond to individual requests for permission to republish abstracts.