Supporters of the Directive say it is aimed at organised crime,
but opponents claim that it could criminalise legitimate
activities. The proposed directive is also controversial because if
passed it would become the first directive to impose criminal
penalties across Europe.
The Second Intellectual Property Rights Directive (IPRED2) was
passed by 374 votes to 278 yesterday after a reading at Monday's
plenary session. It now passes to the Council of Ministers.
Backers of the proposal said that it was designed to apply only
to commercial-scale IP infringers, and that it was focused on
industrial IP infringement, not the acts of individuals.
Much of the opposition to the Directive centred on the fact that
it would criminalise patent infringement, which would instantly
make a large number of European businesses criminal
organisations.
"Until now, large-scale copyright or trademark infringement has
been a crime here, while patent infringement has been a matter for
civil litigation," said Ross Anderson of the Foundation for
Information Policy Research in its submission to the UK
Government's consultation on the proposal. "The new proposal will
force the UK to make patent infringement a crime, and to
criminalise incitement to infringement. The criminalisation of
patent infringement will damage competition, resulting in higher
prices for consumers."
But the rapporteur in charge of the Directive, Italian MEP
Nicola Zingaretti, said that patents were in fact excluded from the
scope of the proposed directive. "According to the rapporteur "this
directive is to fight organised crime"," said a European Parliament
statement. "That is why patents and personal use are out of the
scope. He stressed the risk linked to counterfeited medical
products and the effects of piracy on EU economy."
"The report on criminal measures for enforcing intellectual
property rights leaves too many questions and causes more problems
than we started with," said UK Green MEP Jean Lambert. "Many of the
areas to be covered by the Directive, such as copyright, are
already dealt with effectively by national civil laws. There is
simply no justification for introducing EU-wide criminal penalties
for such minor infringements."
Lobby group the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastucture
(FFII) said that one problem with the proposal is that it extends
the criminalising of inciting someone to infringe copyright to
countries where that is currently not a crime.
"Today, 'inciting' is only criminal in some member states, and
in exceptional cases such as hate speech," said FFII analyst Jonas
Maebe. "Elevating intellectual property rights to the same level is
a scary development."
"On the positive side, it explicitly mentioned several statutory
exceptions to IPRs, where criminal measures should not be applied,"
said Maebe.
