EU Sees Flurry Of IP Policy Activity

With European Commission proposals for copyright reform expected later this year, EU lawmakers, rights-holders and digital rights activists are pushing for major policy shifts. European Parliament resolutions approved on 9 June call for stronger intellectual property protections in non-EU countries, and better internal enforcement against online breaches. A controversial draft report seeking more harmonisation of EU copyright measures has attracted around 600 proposed amendments and will be voted on 16 June.

Meanwhile, the Council said it reached agreement with Parliament on changes to EU trademark law.

Protecting European IP Abroad

The commercial nature of many IPR violations and the growing involvement of organised crime threaten the innovation and creativity that are key EU assets in the global markets, said the non-binding resolution on a strategy for protecting and enforcing IPR in third countries.

Lawmakers urged the European Commission (EC) to balance the interests of rights-holders, companies and end-users. They also asked it to differentiate more clearly between physical counterfeiting and digital copyright violations by, among other things, engaging with online platforms about how to identify and tackle infringements. The resolution, authored by Italian MEP Maria Alessia Mosca, of the Socialists and Democrats, was approved 521-164 in plenary.

MEPs also urged a balance between IPR protections in the pharmaceutical sector and the need to ensure access to generic medicines while bearing in mind patients’ interests.

Better Enforcement in Europe

A separate non-binding resolution by Czech MEP Pavel Svoboda of the European People’s Party pressed the EU institutions to find renewed consensus on an internal action plan for IPR enforcement. Combating IPR breaches should involve all of the actors in the value chain, MEPs said in a 529-143 vote.

They also demanded that the EC and governments put pressure on the industry to come up with new business models to lure consumers to legal content and products. The resolution also called for giving small and mid-sized enterprises help to enforce their IP rights.

The Svoboda resolution won cheers from the Society of Audiovisual Authors, an association of European collective rights management organisations that represent screenwriters and directors.

It “rightly identifies an author’s intellectual property rights as their main source of revenue between projects,” said SAA Executive Director Cécile Despringre. Any future copyright legislation must ensure that authors are fairly remunerated for the exploitation of their works, she said.

European Digital Rights Advocacy Manager Diego Naranja, however, called the report “a mixture of negative and positive elements.” In a 3 June “ENDitorial,” he faulted “simplistic statements” such as that IPR infringements discourage growth, saying the situation is far more nuanced. For instance, Naranja said, while the music industry’s slow adaptation to the digital environment has driven a lot of IP breaches, the market has adapted, with income from concerts growing in recent years. Nor are there yet satisfactory definitions of “commercial scale,” he wrote.

Among the resolution’s positive elements is the call for balances between fundamental rights and privatised law enforcement, Naranja said. He also praised the support for legal offerings to combat unauthorised use of content.

Copyright Harmonisation Key

Implementation of the 2001 directive on harmonisation of certain aspects or copyright and related rights in the information society (Directive 2001/29/EC) “has not led to the EU-wide harmonisation of copyright sought by many parties,” German MEP Julia Reda, of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, wrote in a draft report [pdf] now making its way through the European Parliament Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee.

Reda noted “the optional nature of most copyright exceptions and limitations and the failure to limit the scope of protection of copyright and related rights to those outlined in the directive,” leading to “continuing fragmentation of national copyright laws among member states.” This leads to the inability of people, companies and public institutions to understand the copyright laws, she said. The report, among other things, calls for harmonisation of copyright terms and creation of European IP rights.

Reda’s report, published on 14 January, angered rights owners. Authors’ society organisation GESAC at the time called it an “outrageous attack on the rights of creators” that “serves the purpose of commercial operators and Internet giants rather than consumer needs and authors’ rights.” Among other problems, it said, were Reda’s calls to exclude hyperlinks from copyright and to make all 21 current optional exceptions compulsory.

EDRi, however, believes that any new copyright framework “should be one where the vast majority of citizens are not considered as offenders of intellectual property rights for doing things that seem (and are) perfectly normal, such as private copying or re-using copyrighted material for parody purposes,” Naranja wrote.

JURI’s vote on the report was postponed until 16 June “due to the great number of amendments (556),” Reda’s assistant Christopher Clay said in an email. Processing all of them and reaching compromises supported by a majority wasn’t doable in a shorter time frame, he said. Negotiations on the final compromise amendments are ongoing, he added.

Several main points have met significant resistance from the larger political groups, said Clay. One is the concept of a single European copyright law. A second is the introduction of an “open norm” that would allow flexibility in the interpretation of exceptions and limitations in certain special cases as long as they didn’t conflict with the normal exploitation of a creator’s work or unreasonably prejudice rights-owners’ legitimate interests.

Another bone of contention is Reda’s proposal to cut the term of copyright protection to a duration that doesn’t exceed current international standards as set out in the Berne Convention, said Clay. A fourth is the recommendation to make all exceptions mandatory.

The debate continued on 10 June “on some finer contentious points” such as whether freedom of panorama – which allows people to photograph, video or paint buildings and other art permanently located in a public place and to publish their work without violating copyright laws – should apply to commercial and non-commercial use, and whether to extend the quotation exception to audiovisual material, Clay said.

Trademark Reform Compromise

Meanwhile, the Council’s permanent representatives committee green-lighted trademark law reform compromise language, the Council said. Updating the current systems will make it easier for businesses to innovate and to benefit from better trademark protection against counterfeits such as bogus goods in transit through EU territory, it said.

The new scheme aims to make trademark registration systems throughout the EU more accessible to and efficient for business by lowering costs and complexity, increasing speed, and offering more predictability and legal certainty, the Council said. The text will need final approval from the Council and Parliament.