IPRProposal Directive Info Page

FFII UK: Intro to the directive and further information

Most up-todate status info: ipjustice.org/CODE

Wikipedia: Intro to Intellectual Property including history.

After the vote:

The Register	12/03/2004 Lucy Sherriff Unravelling the IP enforcement debate 09/03/2004 Lucy Sherriff MEPs wave through IP rights enforcement 03/03/2004 Lucy Sherriff Kill the EU IP Rights Enforcement Bill!
EDRi	Press release and list of news articles after the vote
European Parliament	Short summary of the debate Short summary of the remarks during the vote full transcripts of the debate(original language) (html/pdf) in one file
	Roll call votes	html export	Analysis	by Country(zip)
	Resultats de votes Adopted text from 1st reading (html/pdf)

• OLAF reports EUR 850 million fraud in EU institutions...
  The Director-General of the European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF), Mr. Franz-Hermann Brüner, has presented his Annual Activity Report for the 12-month period ending 30 June 2003. This Report concentrates on the operational achievements of the Office in this period. It contains case studies that illustrate how OLAF conducts investigations, together with statistical analysis which demonstrates the growth in OLAF operations and their increasing impact in the fight against EC budget fraud. OLAF estimates the total financial impact of the investigations completed during the reporting period at more than €850 million.
  
  OLAF is independent and also looks at conflicts of interest...

Amendment lists:

• Cappato voting list (rtf)
• all languages in MS-WORD DOC - as separate files,
• English(ONE FILE) (pdf)

Documents: Council Feb 16 COREPER position:

• http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st06/st06376.en04.pdf english
• http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/de/04/st06/st06376.de04.pdf german

• http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/fr/04/st06/st06376.fr04.pdf french

  • replace de/en with your language code
  • Compromise Package(the amendment package which changes the COM proposal to the Council CP)
  • Three-column table comparision of the texts of Commission, Parliament and Council

Papers

• Georg Jakob: Deharmonisation through the IPR directive (pdf:English, Deutsch)

• Ultra-Short Argumentation against the comromise(1page) (pdf)

  • 11 Page detailed version for reference (pdf)

    • Even longer working page on it: IpredCompromiseComments
    • What it aims to rebute: IpredCompromise

Statements with critical elements:

Germany	GRUR	Association for Intellectual Property and Copyright Law (GRUR) (english|german)
Austria	AK	AK-Arbeiterkammer in der Stellungnahme zur Binnenmarktstrategie 2003-2006 (pdf - Seite 27)
	WKÖ	Statement of the Austrian Chambers of Commerce(pdf) It has been distributed to Austrian MEPs last summer. It's about the original proposal, but much of it still applies since the Council's common position as of the last COREPER meeting(pdf) has not changed sufficiently in the sections which can be used against SME by bigger companies.

Intellect UK:

Intellect is the trade association for the information technology, telecommunications and electronics industries in the UK, representing over 1000 organisations.

• The Directive could present new risks and liabilities for companies conducting bona-fide businesses in Europe. That could make Europe an unattractive forum for innovative businesses.
• The Directive risks putting unduly strong weapons in the hands of a rightsholder with a very weak, possibly even invalid right. It might even encourage the holder of such a weak right to hold a bona-fide business to ransom through the threat of the Directive's harsh procedures.
• Furthermore, in cases of commercial dispute between parties where the ownership and potential infringement of intellectual property rights is incidental to the main subject matter of the dispute, affording harsh remedies to the rightsholder creates imbalance in the resolution of that dispute and an increased likelihood of an unjust outcome.
• "Good faith infringements" (meaning those infringements which are not deliberate or reckless, where couterfeiting or piracy is not involved) should not be subject to the harsher penalties proposed by the Directive, and should preferably be out of the scope of the Directive altogether.

Intellect UK's full statement(pdf)

The Environment this directive is placed in is surrounded by:

• a vast amount of minor non-commercial copyright infringements, often on no longer commercially exploited and thus unavailable material my music lovers, but also on music and film media which is in phases of critical commerical exploitation like the so-called "release-window" where the biggest amount of revenue of block-busters is made. The widespread distribution of copyrighted material which is currently commercially exploited or which might in the future be commercially exploited(which also infringes the moral right of authors of control over the first publication) is a harm which lobbyists from especially the movie industry aim to fight.
• copying of CDs, DVDs and Video Tapes for commercial gain
• counterfeiting and organized crime

As long as the scope of the directive is wide, this directive also gives possibilty to abuses:

Danger to SMEs

All the uncertainities on this directive boil down to at least to a possible big problem: Financially strong(usually bigger) companies could have a welcome tool at hand to drive competition from financially weak but innovative SMEs(or smaller/weaker companies in general) out of business:

Patent cases are one example where intentional infringement is rare.

A lot of patents are very abstract in their scope and there are too many of them around so it is almost impossible to even get an overview in some areas of conduct. Even the European patent office refuses to take responsiblity for their own prior art searches carried out on request by patent applicants.

• This is of course not limited to patents (which was said the parliament wants to cut out of this text) but also to copyright wars like SCO/Linux.

Using the interaction of unclearly defined scope, harsh measures with a low set of requirements to be applied which are not even used against terrorism in some member states, financially strong companies could, without any intent to ever file a case get that measures ordered on mere suspect which will be kept up for at least one month without giving any chance to the culprit to fight against these measures or even be informed in before execution.

Paper by Ross Anderson: A Threat to Competition and to Liberty

Articles in the news about the IPR Enforcement Directive and possible real effects:

• 2004-02-20 out-law.com European Parliament set to vote on Enforcement Directive (overview of FFII PR)
• 2004-02-19 The Register EC IP enforcement 'threatens more SCO-style attacks' (describes FFII PR)
• 2004-02-19 lwn.net FFII alert on EU's IP enforcement directive (verbatim repost)
• 2003-11-27 Why IP rights Directive is bad news for new media
• 2003-11-19 Plans for Enforcement Directive threaten broadband
• 2003-11-13 UK business don't 'get' copyright laws
  The vast majority of UK businesses do not understand new copyright obligations covering websites, intranets and even photocopiers, according to a survey commissioned by intellectual property law firm Bristows.
• 2003-10-21 Enforcement Directive: UK consultation

Further, more general infos: IPEnforcementDirective