The Berne Convention,
which was adopted in 1886, deals with the protection of works and the rights of
their authors. The Berne Convention was revised at Paris in 1896 and Berlin in
1908, completed at Berne in 1914, revised at Rome in 1928, at Brussels in 1948,
at Stockholm in 1967 and at Paris in 1971, and it was amended in 1979. The UK ratified
it in 1887, but
did not implement large parts of it for nearly 100 years and did it with the
passage with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
The Berne
Convention deals with the protection of works and the rights of their authors. The
Convention provides creators, such as writers, musicians, poets, artists, etc.,
with tools by which they can control how, by whom and under what conditions
their works are used. It is based on three main principles and contains a
number of provisions defining the minimum level of protection, as well as
special provisions for developing countries that that want to make use of them.
It is based on three main principles (national treatment, independence of
protection, automatic protection).
The Berne
Convention is currently in force and administered by the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO).
While the
convention grants author a number of rights, the most important aspect of the
Berne Convention is that countries must grant an author who is a citizen of
another member state the same protection as it offers its own citizens in
addition to any rights that the convention grants. In other words, the work of
a French citizen in Poland or Morocco automatically possesses the same
protection as the work of a citizen of Poland or Morocco.
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