Re: The Eric Eldred Act

I would not think Berne plus TRIPs would be violated. Once the minimum term provided by such Agreements are complied with, any further extensions would arguably be free from their scope. See Article 5, paragraph (1) of Berne (...as well as the rights specially granted by this Convention). Convention plus TRIPs specially grants to all a term, with all the trimmings, including the no-formality rule. Beyond that, national legislation is on a freehold.

Therefore, the registration-for-extension (in excess of TRIPs minimum term) requirement would not be violative. On the other hand, the first registration is already infringing....except if we accept the convenient but dubious interpretation that U.S. Laws can impose locally the registration that would be void under Berne.

At 08:36 28/01/03 -0500, you wrote:

>On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 1:23AM -0500, Tyler Ochoa wrote:
>>I like it; except that we had such a system before in the renewal
>>provisions of the 1790, 1831, 1870 and 1909 Acts; and Congress expressly
>>scrapped the renewal provisions at the behest of owner interests in the
>>1976 Act. So I imagine the odds of getting Congress to agree to such a
>>tax are pretty long. (Perhaps roughly comparable to the odds (ex ante,
>>not ex post) of getting the Supreme Court to overturn the CTEA!)
>
>Especially since doing so would violate Berne. For all of the (justified,
>IMHO) criticism that Berne comes under, it is still the minimum
>international standard for copyright law. We put a lot of pressure on
>other countries to conform to Berne. I don't think that Congress would
>impose a registration requirement.
>
>Roy Murphy \ CSpice: A Mailing List for Clergy Spouses
>murphy@panix.com \ http://www.panix.com/~murphy/CSpice.html
Received on Wed Jan 29 2003 - 13:24:43 GMT