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Publishers' Licensing Services welcomes appointment of Feryal Clark MP as new minister responsible for intellectual property
Feryal Clark MP has been named as the new government minister responsible for intellectual property.
Clark, parliamentary under-secretary of state for AI and digital government at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), was confirmed on Friday 19th July as the new government minister responsible for the intellectual property office and copyright,.
She replaces replacing Viscount Camrose, the former minister for AI and intellectual property in the previous government.
The appointment has been welcomed by the Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS). Clark is the Member of Parliament for Enfield North and has represented the constituency since 2019.
The minister’s role includes responsibility for both intellectual property and artificial intelligence including AI regulation, AI opportunities and digital public services. Clark will therefore play an important part in the ongoing debate about the relationship between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI).
PLS said: "While it is unclear as to what specific action the new government will take to address creative industry concerns about copyright infringement carried out by AI developers, the Labour Party’s plan for the arts, culture and creative industries, published in March 2024, included a commitment to ‘support, maintain, and promote the UK’s strong copyright regime’ and that finding a balance between protecting the creative industries and fostering innovation would require ‘thoughtful engagement’ with both the creative sector and AI companies."
To help provide a voluntary solution to concerns expressed by rightsholders and AI developers, PLS is working with the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and its other members to develop new collective licences for the use of copyright protected works in generative AI technologies. A new licence for text and data mining (TDM) is to be launched soon, with PLS planning a formal publisher consultation on two licences for workplace use of AI and in the training of generative AI models for later this year.
PLS c.e.o. Tom West said: "I welcome the minister to her new role and her appointment as minister responsible for intellectual property. Copyright, and its relationship with artificial intelligence, has been the subject of much debate in the UK and across the world over the past few years. As an organisation that’s been providing rights and licensing services to publishers for over 40 years, PLS believes that the UK’s ‘gold standard’ copyright framework is fit for purpose and we will be pressing the government to uphold the current framework to not only continue to incentivise human creativity but also safeguard future growth in publishing and the UK’s creative industries."
