Marshalling Copyright Knowledge to Understand Four Decades of Berne

Abstract

Published as part of the festschrift in honor of Professor Marshall Leaffer, this tribute focuses on what would have happened had he, like the fictional character Captain Buck Rogers, been frozen on his way to academia in 1978. What will he discover upon his return in 2021? Will he find the developments in the intervening decades interesting or surprising? What observations would he make had he not been frozen?

Because of Marshall's love for copyright law, his many important contributions to the international intellectual property field and his longtime membership in the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI), this article pays tribute by examining the past four decades of developments surrounding the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

This article begins by exploring three areas that are usually discussed in relation to the Convention's revision process: (1) the arrival of new members; (2) the advent of new technologies; and (3) the introduction of new rights and limitations. It concludes by examining the emergence of new external influences.