The UK Government has made no secret of its intention to move away from the GDPR since leaving the EU, hoping to establish a more flexible regulation. While the EU only allows text and data mining for scientific research, which the author can monetize if they wish, the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has proposed a change to copyright law that would allow data to be mined to train AI business models, without being accused of copyright infringement or forced to pay to do so.

Since the Brexit, the U.K. put in place a national AI strategy last September, followed by a consultation on AI and intellectual property law. This consultation allowed it to publish various proposals for its Data Reform Bill.

For the UK government, while an approach such as the GDPR may harmonize rules across multiple countries, it is not appropriate for the UK and may even hinder innovation.

At the “Tech Monitor Digital Accountability Summit” in June, John Whittingdale MP, Minister of State for Media and Data, said:

“We continue to agree with the principles behind the GDPR, but we believe there are opportunities to deliver this data protection standard in a less burdensome and obstructive way, which is why we have embarked on a reform agenda.”

Unlike the EU approach, where a single regulator is responsible for AI enforcement in each member state, the UK plans to give responsibility to several. The issue of data mining has been assigned to the OPI.

UK Copyright Bill for AI Data Mining

Data mining or data mining is a process of analyzing massive volumes of data from different angles, it aims to extract data, thanks to AI and machine learning, to transform them into usable information. It is used by many companies: e-commerce, finance, advertising, marketing, HR… but also by governments and, among others, in the health field. Text mining aims at extracting high quality knowledge.

The UK Intellectual Property Office’s proposed change to copyright law aims to allow data scientists to mine text and data to train AI and machine learning business models without fear of infringing copyright or being forced to pay additional fees.

During the consultation, the question of whether AI systems could be recognized as inventors in patent applications, as some wanted, was raised, but the IPO does not want to change the UK’s patent criteria.

According to the UK government, these proposed changes to the data mining rules will “help make the UK a place of choice for data mining and AI development,” and support it in its ambition to become a global leader in AI innovation and research.

Translated from Royaume-Uni : l’Office de la Propriété Intellectuelle britannique propose de modifier la loi sur le droit d’auteur