RUSSELS, Oct. 19 - In an effort to fight product counterfeiting and piracy, the European Union is preparing to enact a sweeping intellectual property law that critics say is ill-conceived and tilted heavily in favor of copyright and patent holders.
The proposal would go far beyond existing laws in Europe and the United States by classifying copyright violations and patent infringements, even some unwitting ones, as crimes punishable by prison terms.
Lawyers who have studied a draft of the proposed law say that not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew what the teenager was doing or not.
The proposed law would also make it easier for drug manufacturers to forestall generic competition by effectively stretching the duration of their patents, the critics say, and even the makers of replacement auto parts could face prosecution if they sell their wares to consumers.
Backers of the proposed law, which would replace a patchwork of regulations in the union's 15 member countries, include influential European Union officials like Frits Bolkestein, the union's commissioner for internal markets, whose department drafted the proposed law, and Janelly Fourtou, the French member of the European Parliament who is in charge of leading the debate on it.
Mr. Bolkestein said in an interview last month that criminal penalties, which are rarely invoked in European laws, were necessary in this case "because the issue of counterfeiting is becoming overwhelming in importance."
Major corporations in three industries that suffer the most from counterfeiting - music, films and computer software - have combined their lobbying to try to make the proposed law as tough and far-reaching as possible. Even so, when Mr. Bolkestein unveiled the commission's proposed draft in January, trade associations from the three industries issued a joint statement saying that the commission had "failed to introduce urgently needed measures to hold back the epidemic of counterfeiting."
Opposition to the new law was slow to develop but is gaining momentum. Companies like Nokia, the BT Group, and even Microsoft, itself a major victim of software piracy, have called the proposed law excessive and have warned that it could crush technical innovation.
No one on either side of the debate doubts that product counterfeiting is a major problem. The European Commission estimates that it cost the union 8 billion euros ($9.3 billion) a year in lost economic output from 1998 to 2001. Industry groups say that up to two-thirds of all software in use in Central and Eastern Europe is pirated and that one out of three music CD's sold worldwide is counterfeit.
There is a broad consensus here that a Europewide enforcement law is needed because so much of the illegal activity crosses national boundaries. But there is less agreement on what the law should cover.
The proposal before the European Parliament is broad, going beyond movies, music and software to take in all types of intellectual property including patents, copyrights, trademarks and registered designs.
Critics say that such a sweeping law far exceeds what is needed to combat piracy and would criminalize innocent conduct in a number of situations that cannot reasonably be called counterfeiting.
For example, designers at rival technology companies race to match and improve on each other's work, and must make business decisions every day about the subtle line separating permissible innovation from patent infringement. If crossing that line is made a crime instead of just a civil matter, critics like Nokia say, companies will become much more timid in the laboratory.
"It is vitally important that this directive strike the right balance between protecting the interests of right holders without unfairly impeding others from competing," said Tim Frain, director of intellectual property at Nokia.
Greg Perry, director general of the European Generic Medicines Association, said the proposed law would give the big drug companies "the best tool they could have ever wished for" to fight off generics.
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