[Fsfe-ie] Prison Over Patents? EU Law Unites Foes

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

teresahackett at eircom.net writes:
> Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> > (IPRED2 is of course dead, but some kind of replacement is coming in
> > early
> > 2006, but it will probably be a general criminalisation Directive rather
> > than being specific to patents and/or copyright.)
> 
> Really, IPRED2 is dead?? How did that happen? If I missed the report
> while I was travelling, please shoot me a mail off-list.

Someone else also asked me about this - I didn't realise it wasn't known.

The Commission has withdrawn the proposal (both the Directive and the
Council Framework Decision) in response to the European Court of Justice's
recent ruling on an environmental cases, the co-decision *can* bring in
criminal sanctions.

The original plan then was to bring IPRED2 back in early January as just a
Directive, and merge in some bits from the Council Framework Decision, but
recently I've heard that instead of this the Commission will propose a
general criminalisation Directive (not specific to "IPR"s), in "early 2006".

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan, ___________/       Support FSFE's campaigns against IPRED2
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _/ and software patents by joining the Fellowship
___________________________/ and encouraging others to do so http://fsfe.org