MEPs back private use copies

The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has waded into the debate about establishing a Europe-wide intellectual property rights (IPR) regime, criticising the commission's slow progress on a single digital market and saying citizens should have the right to make "private use" copies.

Adopting a draft resolution by French MEP and published author Marielle Gallo, the committee said the EC will not win its battle against online piracy without overhauling the patent regime, including unifying across member states what is currently a disparate scheme.

The "enormous growth of unauthorised file sharing of copyrighted works is an increasing problem for the European economy in terms of job opportunities and revenues for the industry as well as for government,” says the report from Committee chairman Klaus-Heiner Lehne. However, “the lack of a functioning internal European digital market is a major obstacle... to an attractive legal range of goods and services,” he reports.

The commission has been making moves towards harmonising European patents lately. The commissioner for research, innovation and science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, recently hinted this was on the cards in a speech to technology experts in Brussels.

But progress is not sufficiently fast or radical for the Legal Affairs Committee.

“The committee does not share the commission's view that the current civil enforcement framework in the EU is sufficiently effective,” Lehne reports.

The committee has urged the commission to “propose a comprehensive strategy on IPR which will remove obstacles to creating a single [online] market”. It also advises adapting the European IPR legislative framework to reflect “current trends in society as well as technical developments”.

This would include allowing private use copies under any new legislation. The members point out that, “in cultural terms, the private copy should be seen as an exception to intellectual property rights”. They want individuals who copy originals for private use not to have to prove that their copies are legitimate.

MEPs have also called on the commission to speed up its negotiations for an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and to ensure that the provisions of the ACTA fully comply with existing EU rules on IPR and fundamental rights. A draft ACTA document was published in April.

The Legal Affairs Committee also wants the commission to set up more intellectual property helpdesks outside the EU – notably in India and Russia – to help European businesses actively enforce IPR.

The ease with which digital pirates from outside the EU operate, and the lack of will in some countries to tackle IP infringement, has long irked European IP owners and law makers. The helpdesks would badger foreign governments on behalf of rights owners to crack down on known pirates.