This proposal is ill-reasoned and dangerous. In particular, it imposes undue burdens on infringers of software patents. Europe needs a Parliament that can say NO.

To the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament

Dear President, Dear Members of the European Parliament

We beg your Committee to reject the "Proposal for a directive on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights" COM (2003) 46(01), because

• The justificatory reasoning is inconclusive and highly misleading. It takes only the views of certain interest groups (such as those behind the cited BSA studies) into account. It provides no valid arguments as to why new EU legislation on "IP enforcement" is needed at all.
• The proposal threatens infringers of a wide variety of "intellectual property" regimes with a single set of very harsh enforcement rules, thereby placing an undue burden on citizens in many cases. For example, in combination with extensions to patentability, as approved by your Committee recently, even the simple publication of a self-written computer program on the Internet would expose a European citizen to a risk of criminal prosecution under this directive.

You can find detailed analyses of the proposed directive via the following web pages:

Statement by EFFI to Finland's Ministry of Trade and Industry on the proposed IPR enforcement directive IPJustice: IP Enforcement Whitepaper FIPR: The Draft IP Enforcement Directive EU IP Enforcement Directive Proposal COM (2003) 46(01)

This is not the first time the European Commission is burdening the Parliament with an ill-reasoned and dangerous proposal for legislation on immaterial property titles. Parliaments do not have the ressources needed for rewriting fundamentally flawed proposals, and the European Parliament is not even free to rewrite on its own. Unless you are very picky about what is being submitted to you, you risk to lose control of the legislative process. Europe needs a Parliament that can say No, especially in matters of immaterial property.

Yours sincerely