Turn again Whittingdale -- and does Razzall Dazzle?

To his embarrassment but, he expects, to the embarrassment of rather more people than himself, it was not until a few sunny days ago that the IPKat even knew of the existence of the United Kingdom parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group. Google didn't seem to know too much about it either, taking a rather slow 0.23 seconds to dredge up the 16 'hits' for its exact name that the Court of Justice of the European Union likes to call "organic" search results.

The function of the Group is laudable: "To debate and highlight the value of intellectual propery [ooh!] rights to the economy and the importance of intellectual property protection and enforcement". Does the Group do much debating and highlighting, then? The Kat suspects not. Its website, which has not been updated since before last May's General Election, rather suggests that its good intentions have yet to be put into practice.

Who are the members of the Group? The government 'team' consists of the following earnest souls:

John Whittingdale (who appears to be the point of contact), Louise Bagshawe, Mike Weatherley, Rebecca Harris, Baroness Buscombe, Lord Colwyn, Lord Inglewood, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Razzall [Merpel really loves this name: wouldn't it be great for a rapper?] and John Hemming.

The opposition contingent consists of the following:

Chris Bryant, Jenny Chapman, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, Jim Dowd, Baroness Morris, Lord O’Neill, Stephen Pound, John Robertson, Stephen Timms (all Labour Party) plus Pete Wishart (Scottish Nationalists)

John Whittingdale MP can be contacted at the House of Commons, London SW1A OAA. Tel: 020 7219 3557 (no email address is given). You can read a bit about him here and here. The Kat's very pleased that Mr W is sufficiently interested to be involved in this group, but wonders if he is known to anyone in British IP circles. One further fact about the Group is that it receives secretariat services from the wonderfully-named Luther Pendragon on behalf of the Alliance Against IP Theft (whose website contains an out-of-date reference to the Group): the Alliance also paid for the annual summer reception held at the Commons on 12 July 2010 to which none of the Kats was invited. Does anyone know who was?

Merpel says, this group was founded in 2003 and is therefore the same age as this weblog -- and she wonders if readers can tell her anything about what it does, and what precisely is the level of interest and commitment to the IP debate that may be found among its members. Please post your comments below unless you're worried that they may be defamatory, in which case you can run them past the IPKat first ...