Intellectual Property
This article was originally published in SRA
Executive Summary
Parliament adopts draft IP directive
Parliament adopts draft IP directive
The European Parliament has voted by 339 votes to 144 in favour of the EU's draft Intellectual Property Directive1. The directive will now go forward to the Council of Ministers and, as RAJ Pharma went to press, there were hopes that the legislation could be adopted definitively at its first reading, possibly as early as April 2004. Member states would then have a two-year period in which to transpose the directive.
The aim of the legislation is to make it easier for member states to enforce intellectual property rights, although its main target is criminal organisations that carry out large-scale, commercial counterfeiting rather than individuals who download music from the Internet, for example. A study carried out in 2000 found that counterfeiting and piracy cost the pharmaceutical sector over €290 million per year, and concerns have been expressed that the accession countries might serve as channels for counterfeit goods originating in the Far East to enter Europe.
The directive envisages a number of remedies that would be available to the holders of IP rights against counterfeiters, including the destruction, recall or permanent removal from the market of illegal goods as well as financial compensation, injunctions and damages. Courts would be empowered to order access to banking, financial or commercial documents, although the alleged infringer would retain control of this process, and there would be measures in place to protect confidential information. However, the directive stops short of mandating criminal sanctions for infringements of IP rights, although individual member states would be free to go further than the directive in this respect if they so wished. Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has intimated that further measures for criminal sanctions in this field would be examined at a later date.
Although the text of the directive initially left out patents because, in the view of the parliament's legal affairs committee, they are a ‘too complex and delicate’ issue, subsequent intervention by Council officials led to their inclusion.
It is thought that the speed with which parliament adopted the proposal reflects the desire for the draft directive to be enacted before the enlargement of the EU on 1 May 2004 and the European parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2004.
References
1. Commission press release, 9 March 2004, http://europa.eu.int