Book Chapter
A Future of International Copyright? Berne and the Front Door Out
Rebecca Giblin
Across Intellectual Property: Essays in Honour of Sam Ricketson | Cambridge University Press | Published : 2020
Abstract
The Berne Convention was intended to be regularly revised, but we've now gone almost half a century with no substantive change - and it is looking increasingly unlikely to ever be changed again. But as the world radically transforms around it, Berne’s superseded structures continue to be locked in and given teeth by TRIPS. This chapter explores the practical extent of that lock-in, and provocatively argues that we may soon reach a point where rational countries choose to take Berne’s ‘front door out’: to exercise their rights to domestically depart from its minima to reach a more satisfactory copyright bargain for their authors and the broader public.
Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work has received funding support from the Australian Research Council (FT170100011). I developed these ideas over many enjoyable hours of debate with Sam Ricketson and Jane Ginsburg in New York during late 2017 -thanks to both for their generosity of both time and ideas. Some of the ideas I touch on are developed more deeply elsewhere: see Rebecca Giblin, 'A new copyright bargain? Reclaiming lost culture and getting authors paid' (2018) 41 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 369.