Berne Convention

Berne Convention
Berne Convention for the
Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
  Map of parties to the Convention
Signed9 September 1886
LocationBern, Switzerland
Effective5 December 1887
Condition3 months after exchange of ratifications
Parties181
DepositaryDirector General of the World Intellectual Property Organization
LanguagesFrench (prevailing in case of differences in interpretation) and English, officially translated in Arabic, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish
Full text
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works at Wikisource

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal of agreeing on a set of legal principles for the protection of original work. They drafted and adopted a multi-party contract containing agreements for a uniform, border-crossing system that became known under the same name. Its rules have been updated many times since then.[1][2] The treaty provides authors, musicians, poets, painters, and other creators with the means to control how their works are used, by whom, and on what terms.[3] In some jurisdictions these type of rights are referred to as copyright; on the European continent they are generally referred to as author' rights (from French: droits d'auteur) or makerright (German: Urheberrecht).

As of November 2022, the Berne Convention has been ratified by 181 states out of 195 countries in the world, most of which are also parties to the Paris Act of 1971.[4][5]

The Berne Convention introduced the concept that protection exists the moment a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, and its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. A creator need not register or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the convention. It also enforces a requirement that countries recognize rights held by the citizens of all other parties to the convention. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that ratified the convention. The countries to which the convention applies created a Union for the protection of the rights of authors in their literary and artistic works, known as the Berne Union.

  1. ^ "WIPO - Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works".
  2. ^ WEX Definitions Team. "Berne Convention". Cornell Law School.
  3. ^ "Summary of the Berne Convention". World Intellectual Property Organization.
  4. ^ "WIPO Lex". wipolex.wipo.int. Retrieved 1 September 2021.
  5. ^ Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Status October 1, 2020 (PDF). World Intellectual Property Organization. 2020.