“These proposals would establish requirements for criminal penalties for
intentional infringement of intellectual property rights across the
European Union. Preventing counterfeiting and piracy is essential to
protect consumers’ health and safety from substandard and dangerous
products, in particular counterfeit medicines. It is also essential to
protect the European economy from counterfeits. It is estimated that it
costs the UK alone up to ten billion pounds a year and put over four
thousand British jobs at risk. These goods also help to fund other
criminal activities such as drug dealing and money laundering,
international organised crime and terrorism.

With free circulation of goods across the European Union there is a
clear case for joint action at the European level. However, Labour MEPs
have serious reservations about the particular Commission proposal to
rush to extend criminal sanctions through European Community
legislation.

Furthermore, this legislation raised difficult issues concerning its
scope, particularly in relation to the definitions of intentional
infringement and commercial scale. The definitions threaten to remove
the discretion of trained and qualified national judges to take the
circumstances of each individual case into account. Such decisions are
best to be left to national courts and national judges who have a wealth
of experience in dealing with such cases.

The text as voted by Parliament could run the risk of potentially
putting innocent consumers in prison, while at the same time creating
loopholes for individual criminals engaged in organised and serious
crime. The Labour Members of the European Parliament voted against these
proposals. The proposals were adopted by 374 votes to 278, and
Parliament clearly remains divided on this issue. The text will now be
discussed by the governments of the 27 Member States in the European
Council who must agree a Common Position and then will return to
Parliament for a second reading.”

(edited for brevity)

Jean and the Greens-EFA Group in the European Parliament share many of
your concerns regarding this proposed Directive. We proposed a series of amendments to reflects these concerns at committee stage, which were not adopted by the JURI Committee.

We brought back these amendments for the full plenary debate and vote. The amendments focused on 1) questioning the legal base of the Directive; 2) limiting the scope of the Directive to clear cases of copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting; 3) deleting reference to the nature and level of sanctions 4) deleting reference to the role of the joint investigation teams; 5) highlighting the importance of cross-border cooperation among authorities.

The most crucial amendments applied to Article 2 (on limiting the scope of the directive and on the definitions of ‘commercial scale’ and ‘intentional infringement’, and excluding private users) and to Article 3, to exclude attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting an infringement as being treated as criminal offences.

Jean supported these amendments. One positive outcome of the plenary vote was that private individuals were excluded from the proposed criminal penalties. However, other key amendments were not successful so the Green-group voted against the proposals. Regrettably the Parliament gave its assent by a slim majority.

Jean and the other Green MEPs have been extremely concerned about these
proposals, in particular the potential criminalisation of end-users. See
http://greens-efa-service.eu/flash/ecards/prisoner. A press statement
outlining the Green response to the vote is now available at
http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/pressreleases/dok/180/180603.intellectual_property_rights@en.htm.

Also, Sarah Ludford MEP, emailed to summarise the Lib Dem position: “There is general agreement to remove patents from the scope of the directive, and [we] … believe it should be further restricted. Consequently Sharon Bowles has tabled a number of amendments to the vote in the European Parliament scheduled for Wednesday (25th April) which are concurrent with the aims of the Librarians’, Consumers’ and Innovators’ Coalition amendments.” Her email was lengthy, so shout me if you want the full detail.

http://www.johnbowis.com/