My Lords, I shall be very brief. The beauty of Committee is that entirely opposing propositions can be put forward by the same person. It is only when we get to Report that we have to get serious by being absolutely clear about the propositions being put forward. I therefore do not intend to respond in great detail to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who, I believe, was taking an argument out for a trot. Earlier in Committee, I previously talked about frightening the horses and I am afraid that we are back to horse analogies. It has been an entertaining trot in many respects.
The way that the argument was put together misunderstood what happens in court. It is about the adducing of evidence. It was reassuring that the judge listened to the arguments and evidence and felt as a result that he understood far more about the genesis of the design right. Of course, in a criminal court you add mitigation to all that. It is not worth suddenly locking up people as a result of being prosecuted for design infringement. If you do something reasonable in the eyes of a criminal court in such circumstances, you will be able to mitigate the offence, even though technically you may be guilty of it.
I am afraid that I do not accept the noble Lord’s argument. However, I have wanted to use the expression “a fortiori” for many years in Committee; if you have the ability to prosecute in a criminal court for an infringement of registered design, you should have that ability for unregistered design. If you have it for copyright, you should be able to prosecute for unregistered design. If you have it for trade marks, you should have it for unregistered design. All these intellectual property rights may be complex but they are a vital underpinning for our creators and our creative industries. I am unashamed in my wish for those creative industries to thrive in this country and for their intellectual property protection to be as solid as we can make it, without falling unduly into a monopoly situation, about which the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, is ever vigilant, I am glad to say.