The European Parliament has passed an anti-piracy law, covering everything from handbags to music downloads.
Under the law, counterfeiters could face civil penalties, but proposals for criminal sanctions were dropped.
Before the vote, critics said the law was flawed as it applied the same penalties to both professional counterfeiters and consumers.
But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home.
Property price
The final vote on the EU Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive took place in the European Parliament on 9 March. The directive was passed by 330 votes to 151.
The law was drawn up to target professional pirates, criminals and counterfeiters who make copies of goods such as football shirts or CDs.
During the debates, the directive was widened to cover any infringement of intellectual property.
The directive allows companies to raid homes, seize property and ask courts to freeze bank accounts to protect trademarks or intellectual property they believe are being abused or stolen.
Civil liberty and lobby groups feared that the music industry will also use the law to mount raids on the homes of people who swap songs via file-sharing systems such as Kazaa.
The Enforcement directive was compared to the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act by Andreas Dietl, director of EU Affairs for the European Digital Rights (EDRi) lobby group.
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