Re: State Susceptibility to Suit for Copyright and Patent Infringement

On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Bruce Hayden <bhayden[_at_]uswest.net> wrote:
>
> But lets just assume that it did, and that it had signed some of the
> relevant treaties. In this case, the copyright would be for a work
> hundreds of years old. But if the Vatican, a sovereign state, decided
> to extend its copyright over such an ancient work, would any one
> else in the world have to respect that copyright?

In a word, no. The Vatican is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and under the terms of that treaty, national treatment controls; i.e., the pertinant controlling law in the U.S. would be U.S law. Under U.S. law, the work is not under copyright.

--
Terry Carroll       |    
Santa Clara, CA     |    
carroll[_at_]tjc.com     |       
Modell delendus est |