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The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement about copyright, which was first adopted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886. It was developed at the instigation of Victor Hugo as the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, and was thus influenced by the French "right of the author" (droit d'auteur), which contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon concept of "copyright", which has only been concerned with economic protection.

Prior to the adoption of the Berne Convention, national copyright laws would usually only apply for works created within each country. Consequently, a work published in London by a British national would be protected by copyright in the United Kingdom, but could be copied and sold by anyone in France; likewise, a work published in Paris by a French national would be protected by copyright in France, but could be copied and sold by anyone in the United Kingdom.

The Berne Convention followed in the footsteps of the Paris Convention of 1883, which in the same way had created a framework for international protection for the other kinds of intellectual property: patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

Like the Paris Convention, the Berne Convention set up a bureau to handle the administrative tasks. In 1893, these two small bureaux merged and became the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (best known by its French acronym BIRPI), situated in Berne. In 1960, BIRPI moved from Berne to Geneva, to be closer to the United Nations and other international organizations in that city, and in 1967 BIRPI became WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, which, since 1974, is an organization within the United Nations.

The Berne Convention was revised in Paris in 1896 and in Berlin in 1908, completed in Berne in 1914, revised in Rome in 1928, in Brussels in 1948, in Stockholm in 1967 and in Paris in 1971, and was amended in 1979.

The United States refused initially to become a party to the Convention, since it would have required major changes in its copyright law (particularly with regard to moral rights, removal of general requirement for registration of copyright works as well as elimination of mandatory copyright notice). However, on March 1, 1989, the US "Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988" came into force and the United States became a party to the Berne Convention.

Since almost all nations are members of the World Trade Organization, the TRIPs Agreement requires non-members to accept almost all of the conditions of the Berne Convention.

As of July 2006, there are 162 countries which are parties to the Berne Convention. A full List of countries party to the Berne Convention is available.

The Berne Convention requires its signatories to protect the copyright on works of authors from other signatory countries (known as members of the Berne Union) in the same way it protects the copyright of its own nationals, which means that, for instance, French copyright law applies to anything published or performed in France, regardless of where it was originally created.

In addition to establishing a system of equal treatment that internationalised copyright amongst signatories, the agreement also served the interests of publishing industries and authors by requiring member states to provide strong minimum standards for copyright law.

Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration (note however that when the United States joined the Convention in 1988, they continued to make statutory damages and attorney's fees only available for registered works).

The Berne Convention states that all works except photographic and cinematographic shall be protected for at least 50 years after the author's death, but parties are free to provide longer terms of protection, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. For photography the Berne Convention sets a minimum of 25 years protection from the year the photograph was created, and for cinematography the minimum is 50 years after first showing, or 50 years after creation if it hasn't been shown within 50 years after the creation. Countries under the older revisions of the treaty may choose to provide, and certain types of works (such as phonorecords and motion pictures) may be provided shorter terms.

Although the Berne Convention states that the copyright law of the country where protection is claimed shall be applied, article 7.8 states that "unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work", i.e. an author is normally not entitled longer protection abroad than at home, even if the laws abroad give longer protection. This is commonly known as "the rule of the shorter term". Not all countries have accepted this rule.

• Berne three-step test
• Buenos Aires Convention
• Copyright treaty table
• Official text copyright
• Public domain
• Rome Convention
• Universal Copyright Convention

• The 1971 Berne Convention text - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
• The current Berne Convention text
• WIPO
• Intellectual Property Protection Treaties
• U.S. Copyright office list of countries having copyright relations with the United States (including list of Berne Union countries)