An arms components company which makes bomb parts that were used in the Iraq war is taking legal action to stop anti-war protests being held outside its factory.

The Forbes-listed US company, EDO MBM, which has a subsidiary at Home Farm Industrial Estate, Brighton, is seeking an injunction under the Harassment Act against 14 people and two groups, Smash EDO and the now defunct Bombs Out of Brighton.

An injunction could ban those individuals and groups, and, by association, potentially hundreds of other protesters, from going within a half-mile radius of the EDO premises - except on Thursday afternoons, for two hours, when quiet demonstrations of up to 10 people would be permitted.

There have been weekly pickets at the EDO factory since September 2004.

Richard Mallender, a Green party councillor in Brighton, who has attended the picket, said: "There has never been any violence up there."

There were two rooftop protests at the EDO building and a roadblock outside it in the past year at which some arrests were made. What especially angers the campaigners is that Brighton is a UN peace messenger city, given responsibility to "create and maintain a culture of peace".

EDO manufactures weapons carriage and release equipment, such as bomb racks and Tornado ejector mechanisms, and cites the US defence industry and its allies as clients.

A spokesman for the company said the injunction was not designed to curtail protest but to stop harassment of EDO employees. "The harassment law is being used because people are being harassed."

He cited alleged instances of a female employee being followed to her car, employees and their vehicles being photographed by protesters, a demonstration outside a worker's home, and instances of graffiti and paint bombs at the EDO building.

The legal coordinator for the protesters said: "The defendants are vehemently denying the alleged incidents."