IP Criminal Enforcement Directive: Your chance to speak up

As announced by the UK-IPO, a report on the proposed EC Directive on criminal measures for IP infringment (previously noted by the IPKat here) has now been adopted by the European Parliament. Council discussions of the proposal are expected to resume at expert level in June or later this year.

The UK-IPO would like to have any comments on the report ahead of these discussions (i.e. by the end of May).

There are a number of UK concerns with the proposal, which can be seen in a Home Office report by the European Scrutiny Committee and a report by the European Union Committee of the House of Lords.

The UK-IPO say that they will copy any comments received to the Ministry of Justice (previously the Home Office), who will lead the discussions at expert level.

The IPKat says that if you care about the proposed Directive, and the effects of creating new criminal offences for IP infringements, now is the time to speak up.