Copyright and the Berne Convention

Creators rights to content standardized by international framework

Copyright–the right to control who uses a creator’s content, where and how it gets reproduced, and who ultimately profits from it–is a crucial subject for creatives to be aware of. It has the potential of creating avenues for redress for plagiarism victims and retribution against those who would steal content.

Despite this, for the layman, the subject of copyright can be frequently misunderstood. To the creative it must seem a minefield, with charges ready to trap even the most careful. US Law has its own procedures for trade and service marks and graphical content such as logos. In what seems to be, to the beginner, a shifting sea of what one can do and one can’t do.

The Berne Convention, therefore, is something every creator should be aware of.

The agreement, whose full title is the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, is a document with a long history (it has existed since 1881) and a noble pedigree (Victor Hugo instigated its drafting). Before 1881, according to Wikipedia’s entry, nations were not obliged to recognize the copyrights of foreign nationals (e.g. in Germany anything produced by a Briton could be regarded as public domain, and vice versa). The Berne Convention required all signatory nations to extend that protection automatically.

It Has Just One Moving Part

But that’s not all; copyright under the Convention is automatic upon creation of the work; once one puts media to medium, copyright is created at that moment; pen to paper, paint to canvas, ink to whatever one puts the ink on, and presumably vector ot AI file or pixel to PSD.

Perhaps the most direct practical effect on the creative process is that it is not necessary to include any copyright notification or message whatsoever. While it is still conventional practice to use the traditional © glyph to claim copyright, there is no requirement by the Convention to include it to be granted under the agreement.

For a great many years the United States was not a signatory to the Convention, since the agreement wold have contradicted her own extant law, but by 1989 the objections had been overcome and the U.S.A. became a Convention signatory.

The basic copyright provided under Berne is the life of the author plus fifty years, though signatories are free to extend that term. Each country also still has some freedom to fashion it’s own copyright rules above and beyond the Convention. Also, in this increasingly-digital creative world, new questions about what is copyrightable arise every day.

But, for creatives, the Berne Convention is a valuable thing to know.

Resources and Further Reading

Follow the following links for more information on the Berne Convention. A Google search will also return a good number of links:

• Wikipedia on the Berne Convention
• Berne Convention information at World Intellectual Property Organization (the WIPO administers the agreement internationally)
• Text of the U.S. Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 (courtesy U.S. Copyright Office)