Vance R. Koven writes:
>>To me, the point is irrelevant. Berne is not a treaty for protecting
>artists, it's for protecting copyright. It has nothing to say about
>patents, nor should it; other treaties deal with that.
Article 7 of Berne talks about industrial designs as one way of protecting artistic works, which in some countries is protected with design patents. So Berne does say something about patents, and the title of Berne focuses on the nature of the works - protection of literary and artistic works - and not on how they are protected. Berne does a bit deal with patents.
A bit, because in the 1970s when most (if not all) of Berne was drafted, patents were barely used to protect artistic works. Such minimal language in Berne reflects the minimal artistic patenting activity of the time.
Thirty years later, today, there is much more artistic utility patenting going on. If Berne is more concerned with helping to protect artists and their works, whatever countries are doing to offer such protection, it really should be updated to reflect modern realities. And as I suggested in my article, it would not be hard to tweak Berne to more fully reflect today's greater levels of utility patenting for art works.
Greg Aharonian Received on Fri Apr 07 2006 - 05:00:01 GMT
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