Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

States parties to the Berne Convention (Blue).

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, better known as the Berne Convention, Berne Convention, CBERPOLA or Treaty of Berne, is an international treaty on the protection of copyright in literary and artistic works. Its first text was signed on September 9, 1886, in Bern (Switzerland). It has been completed and revised several times, being last amended on September 28, 1979.

The Berne Convention is based on three basic principles and contains a series of provisions that determine the minimum protection of literary and artistic works that is granted to the author, in addition to the special provisions available to developing countries that have an interest in them. apply them. As of March 2018, 176 states are party to the Convention.

Content of the Agreement

The Berne Convention requires its parties to treat copyright in works by authors of other parties to the convention (known as members of the Berne Union) at least as well as of its own citizens. For example, French copyright law applies to anything published or made in France, regardless of where it was originally created.

In addition to establishing a system of equal treatment harmonizing copyright law between parties, the agreement also required member states to establish strict minimum standards for copyright law.

Copyright under the Berne Convention should be automatic; requiring formal registration is prohibited. However, when the United States joined the Convention on March 1, 1989, it continued to make legal damages and attorneys' fees only available for registered works.

However, Moberg v Leygues (a 2009 decision by a Delaware Federal District Court) held that the protections of the Berne Convention are supposed to be essentially "frictionless& #34;, which means that registration requirements cannot be imposed on a job from a member country other than Berne. This means that Berne member countries can require works originating from their own country to be registered and/or deposited, but cannot require these formalities for works from other Berne member countries.

The three basic principles are as follows:

1. The literary and artistic works of authors of the countries of the Union, or first published in one of those countries, may receive in each of the other Contracting States the same protection that they grant to the works of their own citizens.
2. Such protection should not be conditional on the fulfilment of any formality.
3. Such protection is independent of the existence of corresponding protection in the country of origin of the work. However, if a contracting State provides a longer time than the minimum prescribed by the convention, and the work ceases to be protected in the country of origin, protection may be denied once protection in the country of origin ceases.

Regarding works, protection must include all productions in the literary, scientific and plastic arts domain, whatever their modality or form of expression may be (article 2). The following rights are among those that must be recognized as exclusive rights of authorization: the rights to translate, to make adaptations and arrangements of the work; to interpret in public dramatic, dramatico-musical and musical works; to recite literary works in public; to communicate to the public the interpretation of those works; to spread them; to reproduce them in any modality or form; to use the works as a basis for an audiovisual work; and to reproduce, distribute, perform in public or communicate to the public that audiovisual work.

The convention also covers "moral rights," that is, the right to claim authorship of the work and the right to oppose any mutilation, distortion or other modification of the work, or, of other actions that damage the work and could be detrimental to the honor or prestige of the author.

Regarding the validity of the protection, the general rule provides that protection must be granted, at least, until the end of a period of 50 years from the death of the author.

By Literary and artistic works are understood all productions in the literary, scientific and artistic field, whatever the mode or form of expression, such as books, pamphlets and other writings; conferences, addresses, sermons and other works of the same nature; dramatic or dramatic-musical works; choreographic works and pantomimes; The musical compositions, with or without lyrics; cinematographic works, to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to cinematography; works of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving, lithography; photographic works to which are assimilated those expressed by a procedure analogous to photography; works of applied art; illustrations, maps, plans, sketches and plastic works related to geography, topography, architecture or science.

The essential elements of the Berne Convention are:

1. Formation of the union for the protection of authors of literary and artistic works.
2. Reciprocity of protection, conditioned on compliance with the legislation of the country where the work is to be presented.
3. It is considered a country of origin of a work where it is first published; and in the case of an unpublished work, in the author ' s country of birth.
4. The Convention shall be enjoyed without distinction of nationality.
5. Limits are set in translation and presentation, following the author's criterion.
6. The translation is protected 10 years after the original publication of the work.
7. Protection of all works that had not entered the public domain.
8. Application of the agreement to all colonies of the countries of the union.
9. The office of the international union for the protection of literary and artistic works is created.
10. The embargo of works that are fraudulent and which infringe intellectual rights will be established.
11. ANNEX. It is understood that photography and choreography are of intellectual production, and they receive the same subdivided protection.

History

The Berne Convention was developed at the behest of Victor Hugo, who was a member of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale. He was therefore influenced by 'copyright' #39; French (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of 'copyright,' which only dealt with economic concerns. According to the Convention, the copyright of creative works is valid automatically from its creation without being affirmed or declared. An author does not need to "register" or "request" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed"; that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and any derivative works, unless explicitly denied by the author or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors have the same rights and privileges for copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that has ratified the Convention.

Prior to the Berne Convention, copyright law remained uncoordinated internationally. So, for example, a work published in Great Britain by a British citizen would be covered by copyright there, but anyone in France I could copy it and sell it. The Dutch publisher Albertus Willem Sijthoff, who rose to fame in the translated book trade, wrote to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1899 in opposition to the convention out of concern that its international restrictions would stifle the Dutch printing industry.

The Berne Convention followed in the footsteps of the 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, which had similarly created a framework for the international integration of other types of intellectual property: patents, trademarks and designs industrial.

Like the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention created an office to handle administrative tasks. In 1893, these two small offices merged and became the United International Offices for the Protection of Intellectual Property (better known by its French acronym BIRPI), located in Bern. In 1960, BIRPI moved to Geneva to be closer to the United Nations and other international organizations in that city. In 1967 it became the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and in 1974 it became an organization within the United Nations.

The Berne Convention was completed in Paris in 1886, revised in Berlin in 1908, completed in Berne in 1914, revised in Rome in 1928, in Brussels in 1948, in Stockholm in 1967 and in Paris in 1971, and was amended in 1979.

The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty was adopted in 1996 to address problems posed by information technology and the Internet, which were not addressed by the Berne Convention.