- Universal Copyright Convention
The Universal Copyright Convention (or UCC), adopted at
Geneva in1952 , is one of the two principal international conventions protectingcopyright ; the other is the Berne Convention.The UCC was developed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as an alternative to the Berne Convention for those states which disagreed with aspects of the Berne Convention, but still wished to participate in some form of multilateral copyright protection. These states included developing countries and the
Soviet Union , which thought that the strong copyright protections granted by the Berne Convention overly benefited Western developed copyright-exporting nations, and theUnited States and most ofLatin America . The United States and Latin America were already members of a Pan-American copyright convention, which was weaker than the Berne Convention. The Berne Convention states also became party to the UCC, so that their copyrights would exist in non-Berne convention states.The
United States only provided copyright protection for a fixed, renewable term, and required that in order for a work to be copyrighted it must contain a copyright notice and be registered at theCopyright Office . The Berne Convention, on the other hand, provided for copyright protection for a single term based on the life of theauthor , and did not require registration or the inclusion of a copyright notice for copyright to exist. Thus the United States would have to make several major modifications to its copyright law in order to become a party to it. At the time the United States was unwilling to do so. The UCC thus permits those states which had a system of protection similar to the United States for fixed terms at the time of signature to retain them. Eventually the United States became willing to participate in the Berne convention, and change its national copyright law as required. In1989 it became a party to the Berne Convention as a result of theBerne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 .Under the Second Protocol of the Universal Copyright Convention (Paris text), protection under U.S. Copyright Law is expressly required for works published by the
United Nations , by U.N. specialized agencies and by theOrganization of American States . [ [http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/17C1.txt House Report No. 94-1476] in connection with Title 17,United States Code , Section 104] The same requirement applies to other contracting states as well.Berne Convention states were concerned that the existence of the UCC would encourage parties to the Berne Convention to leave that convention and adopt the UCC instead. So the UCC included a clause stating that parties which were also Berne Convention parties need not apply the provisions of the Convention to any former Berne Convention state which renounced the Berne Convention after 1951. Thus any state which adopts the Berne Convention is penalised if it then decides to renounce it and use the UCC protections instead, since its copyrights might no longer exist in Berne Convention states.
Since almost all of the states in the world are either members or aspiring members of the
World Trade Organization , and are thus conforming to theAgreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, the UCC has lost significance.ee also
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International copyright References
External links
* [http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/lipa/copyrights/The%20Universal%20Copyright%20Convention%20_Geneva%20Text--September.pdf Geneva text of the UCC] from
September 6 1952 .
* [http://www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/copyright/ucc.txt Paris text of the UCC] fromJuly 14 1971 .
* [http://www.unesco.org/culture/copyright/html_eng/ucc52ms.pdf List of countries having ratified, accepted, or acceeded to the UCC in the 1952 version] . (List up to date as ofJanuary 1 ,2000 ; URL last accessedJune 19 ,2006 .)
* [http://www.unesco.org/culture/copyright/html_eng/ucc71ms.pdf List of countries having ratified, accepted, or acceeded to the UCC in the 1971 version] . (List up to date as ofJanuary 1 ,2000 ; URL last accessedJune 19 ,2006 .)
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