Russia Withdraws Reservations to Berne Convention Provisions
28-Feb-2013
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Prepared by: Jelena Jankovic
MOSCOW - On January 31, 2013, the Russian Federation deposited a notification with the WIPO withdrawing its reservation concerning the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
The Berne Convention entered into force in Russia in 1995, but Russia expressed reservation regarding Article 18, stating that the treaty would not extend to the works that were already in the public domain in Russia.
This reservation essentially denied the retroactivity of the Berne Convention regarding pre-1973 foreign works, which could not become copyrighted and thus remained in the public domain in Russia. For a more detailed explanation of this issue please go to the Wikipedia page titled International copyright relations of Russia.
As the intellectual property rights violations were one of the major obstacles to Russia’s World Trade Organization (WTO) entry, the WTO accession agreement among other things required Russia to withdraw its reservations to these provisions. The Russian Federation joined the WTO in August 2012.
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