Anonymous comments on Text which Fourtou wassending around in the Parliament under the title: "argumentaire pour le compromis".

If you can, shorten this text, it is too long.

The EDRI-gram from February 27 talks a bit about this compromise and there is also an amendment package to match the council agreement exactly.

The "argumentaire pour le compromis" is a text which is intended to convince Members of Parliament to vote for this compromise.

Paragraphs like this, which have a green line on the left hand are private comments and are not official statements of AEL or another organisation.

Below, lines like this are from the text "argumentaire pour le compromis": IpredCompromise.

Edited Snapshots from March 1 from this page:

EU Directive on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights

The Council Political Agreement should be adopted in first reading.
Intellectual property is the foundation of human creativity and innovation.

Intellectual property is one way to reward this creativity and innovation, but always needs to be carefully balanced with the wider needs of society.

In Europe, over 5% of the GDP is generated through creative works. Millions of citizens directly depend upon intellectual property protection for their livelihood. Many more benefit from its contributions. Yet widespread counterfeiting and piracy put European consumers and creators at risk. These activities steal jobs and tax revenues from economies. They hamper the growth of legitimate online services and threaten the well-being of consumers. The EU has been considering acting since 1998, when the Commission first released its Green Paper on the problem of counterfeiting and piracy in the EU. In 2000, the European Parliament agreed unanimously that strong action was needed. The proposed Directive is an opportunity to give meaning to this commitment and ensure that creativity is fostered throughout the enlarged Community’s 25 Member States.

Now it is made clear what is intended at present and what shall be achived.

Without a Second Reading, representatives from the 10 new accession states will not have an opportunity to take part in the creation of the Directive. This will reduce their practical commitment to a strong implementation and exclude them from a debate that will have a large impact on their national laws. It will not encourage a sense of European solidarity amongst accession state citizens to see this type of legislation deliberately rushed through to prevent them from having any influence on its form. Nor would a rushed Directive seemingly targeted directly at the accession states provide a properly European welcome to these new members.

Now is the time for the European Parliament to act by adopting the Council Political Agreement in first reading.

In the process, as it was designed, the parliament did not give up it's legislative power to a set of trilogy meetings. Doing so would undermine the legitimation of the EuropeanParliament and can cause even more doubt at (especially younger) citicens that not even the European Parliament is a democratic institution.

The Council Political Agreement should not be further weakened.

Saying that it has been "weakened" can only say a lobbyist. Removing the requirement of criminal sanctions which are not applicable for the first pillar anyway was not weakening but just revoving what had no good legal basis anyway.

The Council Political Agreement is not as far-reaching as the Legal Affairs Committee might have hoped. While it reflects some best practices and remedies already existing remedies from the Member States, the Agreement is less effective in some areas than existing rules in the Member States.

Nobody is suggesting that existing remedies should be weakened by the Directive in Member States. Indeed, Article 2.1 of the Political Agreement begins by stating that "Without prejudice to the means which are or may be provided for in Community or national legislation, in so far as those means may be more favourable for right holders, the measures and procedures provided for by this Directive shall apply..."

It creates a bare minimum in terms of meaningful legislation that should not be further weakened.

This sounds rather like a line from a lobbyist or stakeholder, there are good reasons to change the text. It is also one of the most dangerous misconceptions. The measures in the directive introduce criminal procedure into civil law and this is a fundamental change until now abolutely alien to the legal systems of most of the Member States.

It is, however, an important first step toward eliminating counterfeiting and piracy in the EU.

Lets be honest: There have been lots of highly effective predecessor steps. If there were no such steps then the whole market in the EU would not work.

What the directive actually does is set one of the most extreme legislative steps in the history of the common European market. The field where this compromise actually lowers a minimum of conditions which are commonly accepted throughout the EU, is the field of fundamental procedural rights like Art 6 EMRK.

For the directive to harmonize and not de-harmonize, dropping the term "Intellectual Property Rights" - a term which is considered by leading scholars to "only serve to obscure the real legal facts", would be a good start.

It brings the EU closer to achieving the Lisbon goal of making Europe the world’s leading knowledge-based economy.

As patents are included in the scope of the current proposal, there is a huge danger that it will bring Europe further away from this goal than where it was when this goal was set. With the patent system, there can be no guarantee that you are not infringing by the fact that you are creating independently. And there is no guarantee against severe damage to the economic situation of your company by these measures. It would be better to play safe and not take this risk altogether by not providing innovative products or services altogether for many companies, but this is not in-line with the Lisbon goals.

Ultimately, its adoption will send an important signal to countries outside the EU about the EU’s commitment to creativity and innovation.

No one will go to jail as a result of the proposed Directive.

Also it has been said by MEPs that patents are out of the scope of this direcive, now they are back in. Seeing the scope floating back and forth, even weeks before 1st reading is not a sign of good shape.

No one will go to jail as a result of the proposed Directive. But houses will be searched, all kinds of equipment will be seized, bank accounts will be frozen and ISPs will have to give previously confidential information to rightholders.

Anybody's homes, anybody's equipement, anybody's bank account, anybody's confidential information - from Teenagers to SMEs and maybe, hey, if we're lucky we might also have some counterfeiters among them!

The Political Agreement adopted by the Council does not establish criminal penalties. It is a purely civil instrument.

From another point of view, it can be said that the seizures of private homes and other provisions made possible under these terms are elements of exclusively criminal law in most member states and do not belong to civil law. This, combined with the low threshold for these measures give them already the possiblity to use them as sanction.

No one will be going to jail on the basis of this text – despite what some have said.

If criminal sanctions would have been taken out of the JURI draft as soon as the scope has been expanded, nobody would have said this, but in fact, jail was part of JURI drafts, it's not the failure of those which said it but of JURI, that it had to be said.

The criminal penalties initially contemplated by both the Parliament and the Commission have now been abandoned.

Georg Jakob wrote in his Analysis of the Compromise (pdf):

If you bring together three lawyers from across Europe, it soon becomes clear that it will prove very difficult to get a definition of either Intellectual or Industrial Property they will all agree on, especially when it comes to the question of which areas of law should actually be included.
Even the concept of a property right is vastly different in the English common law and European continental law. And although the term Intellectual Property seems to be marketed heavily by some interest groups, hardly any of the national legal systems actually use it. Where the term has actually survived, it seems to be for historic reasons.
One of Germany's most distinguished experts has gone so far as to call the term Intellectual Property an aberration of legal theory, drawn from the junkyard of legal history, which only serves to obscure the facts - it is quite rare that legal scholars find such strong words.

As conceived by the Council, the Directive will not impose harsh criminal sanctions on individuals.

But it wasn't the idea of the rapporteur to remove them.

It does not provide for any of the criminal remedies available under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Criminal sanctions have been dropped from the proposal, but the measures it contains still belong to criminal procedure. This is the exact opposite from "purely civil".

The Directive’s measures do not apply without restriction.

Really? It is quite questionable if an entry level requirement for applying measures from that law has substantial height. Step rules for increasing severity of applied measures don't exist really. In other words, fullfilling the entry level on a claim opens anything so that in practice any company or individual can be made a target for those measures.

Consistent with the Legal Affairs Committee’s Report and the TRIPs Agreement, the Council proposal permits effective action against any acts of infringement of IPRs. This does not mean that the Directive’s measures now apply without restriction, however. Instead, under the Council Agreement, certain Articles of the Directive (Articles 7(2), 9 and 10(1)(a)) only apply where the conduct involved is on a “commercial scale”.

This is a step in the right direction, but should apply to the entire Directive.

In terms of existing laws there is a fundamental split between commercial law and private law so that those rather different worlds will get the law they deserve. As the target is the economy, it should be made clear for the whole law. If there is any further need for regulating this for private law as well then a totally separate Directive should serve that. This will avoid lots of confusion in application and unbalanced design for the later law practice.

This approach provides for the limits that some have demanded and excludes acts done by end consumers acting in good faith.

The EFF disagrees:

The key to the directive is the definition of “commercial scale.” Several of the more extreme new remedies are only available for commercial-scale infringement. However, this is largely undermined by the definition in new recital 13a of the directive, which states, “The acts which are committed on a commercial scale are those carried out for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage.”

Although it goes on to say, “This would normally exclude acts done by end consumers acting in good faith,” the meaning of “indirect economic advantage” is unclear and the directive is not limited to intentional infringements. Therefore, there is concern that rights-holders will be able to use the new tougher penalties against consumers who accidentally or unknowingly infringe, including those who commit minor infringements without any commercial purpose or impact.

The Directive provides a “right of information” that is balanced, limited and that fully and appropriately respects individual privacy.

If the scale of measures were limited to a narrow field of application with the explicit request to balance the measures against all interests and with respect to the quality and amount of evidence that is present plus the clear extended liability of the participiating groups towards the target of the measure in case of any sort of damage due to the measure then it can be assumed to be applicable in a balanced way. The primary goal is to apply such measures as rarely as needed and only in cases where an adequate effect of the measure is likely and expectable.

Some have suggested that the “right of information” (Article 9) could lead to abuse and potentially intrude on individual privacy. This is not true. Article 9 includes several safeguards against abuse. First, the Council Agreement limits this right to conduct occurring on a “commercial scale”.

Again, “commercial scale” is unclear (has to be defined), see the EFF comment above.

Second, requests for information must be “justified and proportionate”. Most importantly, only a judicial authority can order that information be provided.

This must be strengthened to require that an independent judge or court of law makes an order. The EU must avoid the problems of the US situation, where orders are issued under the DMCA by a court clerk.

Finally, use of the measure must not prejudice rules on confidential information, on treatment of personal data, and on the right against self-incrimination. And as with all measures in the Directive, the right of information is subject to the general requirement in Article 3 that measures be fair and proportionate.

Anything potentially interferring with human and civil rights my only be done if it is "fair and proportionate". Repeating these phrases in a directive is pure rethoric, as it is common knowledge that laws and of course Directives which laws will be based on have to specify clearly how that fairness and proportionality shall be achieved, thereby providing guidance and control for judicial authorities.

To respond to that objection by saying "We have to trust our judges" would be naive - even our Constitution wouldn't trust them so far. That is why we have a seperation of powers.

Given these many safeguards, ISPs can be assured that they will not be flooded with numerous and potentially unfair requests for information. And individuals can be confident their privacy will be respected.

Given that the "safeguards" are insufficient, the opposite is true.

Existing intellectual property rights and exceptions are unaffected by the Directive.
The EU has a long-established and well-balanced framework of intellectual property legislation which includes the 1991 Software Directive and the 2001 Copyright Directive. The proposed Enforcement Directive respects this framework, as it should. Article 2 of the proposed Directive states unequivocally that the Directive does not affect existing Community legislation on intellectual property, including the Software and Copyright Directives. Because the proposed Directive does not change the substantive IP rules, conduct that did not infringe an intellectual property right before the adoption of the proposed Directive will not infringe one after the Directive’s adoption. The proposed Directive does not create new or different rights, nor does it alter the exceptions to these rights. Instead, the proposed Directive simply defines workable tools needed to enforce existing rights, as the EU is required to do by the WTO TRIPs Agreement.

That all sounds like empty promises - it will be clear after a few decades if there was never ever a conflict or any other sort of afect to other laws. Even biggest care can not ensure that there is no problem at all, considered the amount of law texts in the EU and its Member States plus all international treaties.

The last sentence suggests that the EU has signed TRIPS and some member states have not and this Directive is needed therefore, but Member States are already signatories to the TRIPs agreement, and so must implement its provisions with or without this Directive.

Even distingushed academics(IPREnfDirectors2) in the field of IP law could not find an answer to the question why the EU has to impose these Super-TRIPS requirements on member states and these academics believe it has been a wise decision in the past to leave questions of legal procedure to member states (principle of subsidiarity).

The TRIPs agreement is increasingly becoming the subject of criticism because of conflicts with national constitutions and national law. As more recent research shows, it is also in conflict with important regulations of international law, e.g. the UN-convention on cultural and biological diversity.

To just ignore those conflicts by blindly following the TRIPS-Interpretation proposed by certain interst groups neglects the important role a body like the EU could and should play in defining the international economic future.

The Directive does not require that Internet Service Providers ‘police’ their networks, nor does it subject ISPs to new or greater liability for illegal activity occurring on their networks.
Some have suggested that the Directive will impose undue burdens on Internet service providers (ISPs), to the detriment of the Information Society. The rules relating to the liability of ISPs for illegal content carried on their networks are established in Articles 12-15 of the 2000 “E-Commerce Directive”. These rules are fair and workable and reflect a balance among many competing interests. They have worked well in practice. The proposed Directive respects those rules – as it should. Article 2(3)(a) of the proposed Directive expressly states that the Directive shall not affect the E-Commerce Directive and, more particularly, shall not affect Articles 12-15 of the E-Commerce Directive. This means that the existing rules on ISP liability will not change. And it means that ISPs will not be required to monitor or “police” their networks. There are many other safeguards for ISPs (and others) in the proposed Directive. For example, with regard to the right of information, requests for information must be justified and proportionate. Other measures in the Directive are similarly limited. These limitations ensure that ISPs will not be faced with limitless requests for injunctions, demands for information or seizure of their equipment.

Again, these "safeguards" have to be considered insufficient, as they are purely rethoric without any significant meaning or guidance for judicial authorities.

The Directive is good for consumers and respects their legitimate expectations.
Some have suggested that this Directive is bad for consumers. First and foremost, we must remember that it is counterfeiting and piracy that are bad for consumers. It is consumers who are the real victims of counterfeiters. They buy products that they believe to be genuine, only to discover that they have been misled. In the most extreme instances, consumers can be physically harmed by counterfeit products.

Non-informational products are not topic for the Directive and so off topic right here.

Criminal subjects, such as large scale pirates and counterfeiters, will be hit by the criminal law already. Only non criminal subjects will get hit specifically by an extra civil law. This means cases where there was no intent to violate sth. In the end we are where we are... civil law tries to duplicate criminal law.

Yes, strangely customers can even be harmed by genuine products. Of course the customer may not be misled about if he is buying a brand product or a alternative product. Competition is the most important aspect for the customer to have a useful market on this side of the trade, otherwise the only supplyer of replacement parts can dictate price and qualitiy at his will.

It is also important to note that the Directive itself includes safeguards for consumers and preserves their legitimate expectations. For example pursuant to Article 3, the application of the Directive’s measures must be proportionate in all instances. Article 2 make clear that the private copying exception as established in the EU Copyright Directive remains unaffected.

It feels to me like the Directive is far from its original scope here. Copying information in my private sphere is a deal with myself, so its regulations do directly affect something that is truely non-commercial. No record shop at the corner will sue a music enthusiast for making a listening copy from his legally bought media to extend the media´s life.

The Directive fully respects EU data privacy laws.
The EU is committed to protecting individual privacy. The proposed Directive respects this commitment. Over and again, its measures require that privacy be fully respected. For example, any order made under Article 9 (the right of information) must not prejudice provisions on the treatment of personal data. A judicial authority must be involved, further ensuring that privacy is respected. Other provisions are similarly limited. We must recall, however, that privacy should be a shield rather than a sword. Those who are committing illegal acts must not be allowed to cloak themselves behind spurious claims to privacy.

We have to remember that we are not only talking about privacy, as e.g. the provisions of Art 6 EMRK are much more affected by this Directive. One of the main reaons, why these human rights have been designed, was to protect innocent citizens from unjust investigations.

The Directive is good for SMEs and mindful of EU competition laws.
Some have suggested that this Directive will stifle competition in the EU and/or make the EU an unattractive forum for SMEs. To the contrary, strong rules on enforcement will enhance competition.

The Austrian Chambers of Commerce submitted a statement(pdf) criticising the conditions on which the investigative measures of the Directive can be applied as weak and undefined, saying that the Directive was open to abuse and therefore potentially damaging, in particular to SMEs. This statement has been submitted in May 2003, the problems pointed out by the Chamber of Commerce still have not been fixed.

In addition, it will be particularly problematic to ensure that SMEs do not get involved unwittingly in patent disputes with large right holders. As the rapporteur said in the Legal Affairs Committee report on the Directive, "the question of patent protection is such a complex and delicate issue that it deserves a specific text, perhaps following adoption of the text on the Community patent."

The Directive itself contains safeguards to ensure that SMEs are not prejudiced by its application. As a general rule, Article 3 instructs Member States to apply the Directive in a manner that avoids the creation of barriers to legitimate trade. The measures themselves also include safeguards against abuse. For example, the Directive’s rules on civil ex parte (surprise) searches (Article 8) requires that judicial authorities have the ability to obtain from right holders an adequate security or equivalent assurance; this ensures that where a search is wrongly conducted, the defendant can be compensated for any resulting prejudice. Other Articles contain similar safeguards.

Finally, it is important to recall that this Directive is based on the best practices in the Member States. We are unaware of any evidence that suggests that these tools have been misused against SMEs or that they have stifled competition in any way.

Those "Member States" must be the UK and Belgium. In the UK, the Anton Pillar order and the Mareva injunction have become subject to severe criticism and therfore their application is extremely limited. Neither Israel, Australia, Trinidad or Tobago seem to be EU Member States.

Indeed, the evidence is to the contrary: weak IP protection undermines competition.

Could any pointer be given to the evidence referred to in the above line?

A CEC Indprop presentation(pdf) seems to suggest a different image: http://wiki.ael.be/uploads/Competition-vs-IP-law.gif
That's at least the view from patents where stronger IP protection definitely leads to less competition, and the same would be the case for overly strong protection in other areas. For example, big trademark holders like Microsoft enforce their trade marks against competition from smaller companies to forbid selling of competitive products, e.g.: http://www.lin---s.com/
Another competitor of Microsoft got an injunction which was forbidding him to sell his product because of an empty and unused menu item in one of the many menus whose name was similar to a product of another company.(german report). There is a incomplete list List of Trademark Cases by Werner Heuser, Tuxmobil, former Mobilix(centered at Open Source Software projects).
In addition, copyright charges without presenting any proof have been invoked by SCO, a company which got a big money infusion from Microsoft just before starting a fight against Linux itself, a very competitive Operating System against Microsoft's Windows.

The Directive supports interoperability and open source software models.
The proposed Directive will not undermine the ongoing development of open source software in the EU. First it does not affect the 1991 Software Directive.

Thus the acts of reverse engineering to achieve interoperability that have been permitted under the Software Directive for over a decade will continue to be permitted.

But since the level of conditions for applying the measures of the directive is extremly low, "reverse engineering" combined with a suspected additional infringement will likely equal "reasonable available evidence", letting the suspect fall victim to searches, seizures and the like being kept up for at least a month. More than likely enough to help Microsoft or Vivendi-Universal to shut a small, innovative competitor down completely.

Or see also the time that SCO took to claim that a whole OS (Linux) is bearing duplicated code which is owned by them until the point in time when they had sued IBM and pulled to court, and IBM is still waiting for SCO to bring enough proof from their side to understand what the core of the lawsuit really is. Up to now (End February 2004) there are still long SCO excuses why they are not yet coming to the point. All in all a long time for making other´s lifes difficult.

An accellerating aspect for lawsuits would be highly important. Information business is a very fast business. After 3 months nothing is the same.

Indeed, any conduct permitted by the Software Directive will still be permitted after the adoption of the Enforcement Directive.

There is another Directive, the Directive on computer-implemented inventions, which is, still in progress. Because it is, no assessment can be made on the issues related to this directive:

Business secrets which require reverse engineering are not the only way to prevent interoperability, patents are another and by having patents in the scope of this Directive, without provisions for interoperability related to patents, depending on the final outcome of the Directive on computer-implemented inventions (if its final version has only insufficient interoperability privileges), this compromise will hurt interoperability even at the patent level and would extend any negative outcome of the adoption or not-adoption if the directive on computer-implemented inventions. Therefore, it is extremely important to remove patents from the scope of this direcive.

Moreover, enforcement of IPRs is good for OSS developers just as it is for commercial software developers.

Just to prevent a possible misconception to readers of the above sentence: Open Source Software developers can be commerical software developers, e.g. Sun's OpenOffice is developed under an Open Source License and sold commercially at the same time.

Yes, OSS developers can benefit from this Directive, but as an individual developer, it's unlikely that he can risk the securities which need to be provided for seizures of commercial companies and pay the legal expenses.

Obligations regarding the use of open source software are established in the respective OS licenses and grounded upon IPRs.

Copyright, just to be specific. A specific form of open source software which is called Free Software (Free as in Libre) uses Copyright to create rather the opposite of Copyright, which is called Copyleft, which gives away the author's rights but under the provision that nobody else may take these rights back and destroy the created freedom. Existing European Union Directives made already for good protection of copyright, but as seen in the US, an imbalanced copyright(too much on the side of the copiers, to little on the side of the authors) system can have bad effects. For example, for much too long, SCO has been able to make unproven claims about Linux while SCO had to stop these unproven claims in Europe on quite short notice.

The ability to enforce these IPRs is a critical element in maintaining the open source system.

Whoever was in danger of beeing sued for open source licenses looked for a solution quite quickly and avoiding the lawsuit. The whole thing is reliable.

This works already. IPRs are a two-sided sword, not striking the right balance will have detrimental effects.

Failure to achieve a minimal harmonisation of IPR enforcement rules in an enlarged EU will expose software developers – both commercial and open source – to situations in which they are unable to enforce their respective rights.

No Open Source Software developer has suggested that the strong enforcement provisions in this directive are necessary in any way to maintain the open source system. However, many open source developers and distributors are worried that the Directive would open them up to action under these provisions for complex and contested arguments over intellectual property. This will especially be the case if the Parliament does not stand firm on the amendments it made during the first reading of the Software Patent Directive.

Ending up in a situation with fear of huge legal fees for unintentional patent infringement as well as using and selling Open Source software in good faith would discourage development activities and competition, ultimatively stifling innovation.

There is no longer a concern that the Directive’s remedies will be applied unjustly in patent disputes.
Despite initial opposition by the Legal Affairs Committee, who had sought to exclude these from the scope of the Directive, the Council text applies to patent infringements.

This wasn't the reasoning found in the Legal Affairs Committee report(more on it below). The concerns mentioned here were put forward by Microsoft and Nokia.

The Legal Affairs Committee properly believed that certain of the Directive’s measures (double damages and strong criminal sanctions) should not apply to patent infringements. This concern has been mitigated by the elimination of double damages and criminal sanctions from the Directive. Patent litigation tends to focus on questions about the validity of the relevant patent, and not necessarily on counterfeiting matters. In these circumstances, strong criminal sanctions and double damage remedies are less appropriate.

Again, the opinion of the big players has been followed, the rapporteur has put her documented concerns aside, more on them below.

Patent litigation is almost exclusively conducted between competing commercial organisations involved in the same area of trade.

The bad thing with patent litigation is that it is so costly that anyone will seek to aviod it wherever possible, so anyone who could infringe is affected, only in cases where both companies are financially strong and enough market share is at risk you see compainies actually going into open court litigation, otherwise the huge legal costs do not pay off.

Patent litigation tends to focus on questions about the validity of the relevant patent, and not necessarily on counterfeiting matters.

Exactly, it is the character of any legal dispute to focus on matters relevant to the dispute, it would make no sense to discuss matters of other areas of law on one area. It is highly surprising that anyone would think of mentioning counterfeiting matters in patent disputes.

In these circumstances, strong criminal sanctions and double damage remedies are less appropriate. Given that these remedies have been eliminated from the Directive, however, there is no longer a concern that they will be unjustly applied in patent disputes.

Patent law is a thing of its own. There is much more than just a creation or piece of information behind. Patent law can get violated without ever knowing until someone recognizes a speicfic abstract design principle that is granted in form of a patent. As there is some sort of competition for getting more and more patents every year, it is not possible for a normal human nor for anyone to check all possible relevant patents that could apply to a specific object. Patent law in its core is a right on objects and their shape concept, so it is rather a principle that you can learn, a progress in genius and therefore a technical thought. What sort of product you make with that is a rather different story. Since patents are an aspect of regular products it is no problem to identify the vendor or origin. The product design is proof enough and so there is no need for covering it in this trade oriented directive. There is an upcoming Patents regulation which will take care of harmonizing patents.

Even normal damage is too much if it is not guaranteed that the provisions of this Directive will take effect only on intentional patent infringements. The reason for this is that the patent system suffers greatly of the problem of independent creation which copyright and trademark practise do not suffer. But also limiting to intentional infringement is troublesome, from an FFII proposal listing on patents, just to demonstrate the level of complexity: - intentional(Council), BUT: sanctions shouldn't discourage people from reading patent applications.
- breadth of monopoly (how far it goes beyond an individual creation)
- likelyness of the validity of the claims (whether the defendant can point to some new prior art)
- how old the claims are
- for how long and how visibly the right-holder's enforcement policy has been publicised -- (e.g. submarine patents don't deserve strong enforcement at the expense of the public), - whether a non-discriminatory licensing policy has been published

Complexity was the main reason why patents have been left out in the official JURI report!

In the final report A5-0468/2003(the report on this directive), you can find these words:

The rapporteur's approach:
...

On the matter of patents the rapporteur proposes excluding them from the directive’s scope, since the European Patent Convention is the sole text in force at present and the question of patent protection is such a complex and delicate issue that it deserves a specific text, perhaps following adoption of the text on the Community patent.

There is noting more to add on the issue of patents, the rapporteur herself says something completely different now than what she wrote into the official report.

In short: The removal of double damages made the complex and delicate issue go away, so that there doesn't need to be any note about it.

So the logic here is: Let's make a law which introduces torture and the death penalty. But we do not want children to be subject to those measures. But instead of exluding anybody under a certain age from the scope of that law, we take the death penalty out. This won't save 3-year-olds from torture, would it?

See also this entry on Lenz Blog on this point.

Further information and papers about the Proposal and the Compromise are at: IPRProposalDirectiveInfoPage

Just as a final side note: Madame Janelly Fourtou's husband is Jean-René Fourtou, the CEO of Vivendi-Universal, which is one of the 5 big media enterprises. Before this job he was the CEO of Aventis (a biotech/pharma giant), and he himself owns many patents: http://www.aful.org/wws/arc/patents/2003-06/msg00024.html

Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page Execution took real: 0.268, user: 0.150, sys: 0.010 seconds