Valuing Australian copyright industries

A report released last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Australian Copyright Council, titled Making the Intangible Tangible, the Economic Contribution of Australia’s Copyright Industries, found that Australia’s copyright industries in 2007:

• employed more than 837,000 people (8 percent of the nation’s workforce) – up 21 percent since 1996;
• generated $97.7 billion in economic activity (10.3 percent of GDP) – up 66 percent since 1996; and
• accounted for $6.8 billion in exports (4.1 percent of all exports) – up 6.3 percent since 1996.

According to Ms Libby Baulch, Executive Officer, Australian Copyright Council, copyright was vital for innovative businesses looking to develop new products for the Australian market and for export and that “research has shown that intangible assets, such as intellectual property, represent an increasingly significant proportion of most companies’ value ... The facts are that copyright industries have increased their share of GDP and employment over the past decade while other industries such as agriculture, forestry and fishing have gone backwards.”

These figures would place the copyright industries in Australia slightly below the United States in terms of overall economic contribution (10.3% of GDP as compared to 11.1%).

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