Fair Use to report report news: Berne Union & UCC

Dear friends,

I am dealing with a study about the "right to report news", and the copyrights. I need to interpret the article 10 bis of the Berne Union.

This article opens the possibility for the *new publication of articles about current issues*, but with an exception:

   The exception that *the articles were first published under a reserve    of rights* (notice of "copyright").

In that case, very very few articles or works could be republished, because most of the works bear a notice of copyright, and the article 10 bis could have no virtuality.

I think: that the mention of such exception, is just to coordinate the life of the Berne Union Countries (that defende rights of the authors as property rights), with the traffic of the Universal Copyright Convention countries (which defende a contractualist view).

So the exception ensured that when a work from the UCC entered in any of the countries of the Bern Union, the copyright clause is going to be respected (although such countries also may have a similar clause of fair use!)

What do you think?

Article XVII of the UCC aids this interpretation, as well as the "Added Declaration" of the countries that also belong to the Berne Convention regarding this article. But I have little information about the process of creation of article 10 bis).

Carlos de Miguel
<c_miguel[_at_]idecnet.com> Received on Wed Jun 02 1999 - 11:26:14 GMT