UK, US top GIPI copyright chart

The fourth report of the Global Intellectual Property Index (GIPI 4  -- nothing to do with this Gipi though), produced by the Z/Yen Group with support from the City of London Corporation, has just been launched at the London office of sponsoring law firm Taylor Wessing LLP.  The Report tabulates and analyses some 14,000 assessments of the performance of the IP laws of 36 jurisdictions, broken down by 74 objective criteria.  Some general comments on GIPI 4 can be found on the IPKat weblog.

GIPI 4: a sort of IP Olympics ...

Regarding copyright, the country that heads the chart is the United Kingdom, closely followed by the United States and Singapore.  Fourth is Germany, trailed closely by Sweden, France, Switzerland and Austria. Japan lies ninth, ahead of Hungary. At the bottom of the table sits Indonesia beneath, in ascending order, India, Ukraine, South Africa and China. As GIPI 4 points out, there has been a considerable degree of bunching in the countries' ratings -- the top country is rated 10% lower than the US was two years ago in GIPI 3, while the lowly Indonesia was rated around 30% higher than China was when it stood at the foot of the list in 2011. On the whole, the better-rated territories scored well for effective enforcement but less well for cost-effectiveness and, as might be expected, jurisdictions seen as positively inclined towards copyright scored higher than those that did not.

In terms of movement since 2011, Singapore, New Zealand and South Korea have done best, while the Netherlands, Australia, Ireland and South Africa were the biggest fallers. Japan and Canada (where much attention has been focused on last year's Supreme Court litigation on the parameters of fair user) remain more or less static.

You can download a copy of GIPI 4, from the Taylor Wessing website here

To participate in the GIPI survey by rating those jurisdictions with which you are familiar, click on the Z/Yen Group's GIPI login here.