IP crime data for 2007 published

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published an interim report covering intellectual property (IP) crime data for 2007. The last IP crime report, which was published in December 2007, included IP crime data from 2006 (see Legal update, Government publishes 2007 intellectual property crime report). The IPO is to change the reporting period for the annual crime report from a calendar year basis to April to March, to follow the financial year, and this interim report will be included as an annex to the 2008/09 report. The interim report contains data from a number of sources, including a UK survey on film and television piracy, a study on the amount of unlicensed software in the EU, UK court statistics on IP cases, and data from a European Commission report on customs activities in relation to counterfeiting and piracy. Source: IPO press release, 9 January 2009.