IPR Enforcement

The European Union held a seminar today on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Hot on the discussion list was what to do about those organisations involved in online selling of counterfeit goods and services (for which read that they are targetting eBay and peer-to-peer file-sharing).

The meeting was held behind closed doors but they obviously could not resist revealing just a little of what they were doing.

Some 200 people were invited to the meeting which was hosted in Stockholm by the Swedish Presidency. The press release from the European Commission did its best to position counterfeiting and piracy as a

The EU is stepping up the pressure on eBay at the same time as secretly negotiating criminal sanctions within the ACTA, as part of a long-term IPR enforcement strategy.

The European Commission is holding talks about a notice and take-down procedure for online auction and ecommerce sites. The objective of the measures under discussion is to enable large rights-holders and trade-mark owners to get auction listings and sellers removed and to force liability for individual listings onto auction site owners so that they will police their users. The major auction site owner is of course, eBay. The IPRED directive is being wielded at eBay, as the EU's weapon of choice if eBay does not agree.

The existence of the talks was disclosed

The European Commission is secretly talking with industry on Europe-wide 3-strikes measures. In what would appear to be British-inspired intiative, it wants to broker agreements between broadband providers and rights-holders, threatening EU legislation if they do not co-operate.

A meeting was held on 6 July, attended by rights-holders, trade unions, and Internet providers. The Commission's agenda was to start of series of talks to set up 'voluntary agreeements' for dealing on online copyright protection of 'creative content' which is defined as 'books, films and music'. 'Sanctions and remedies' were discussed, as well as