The Buenos Aires Convention (Third

Pan-American Convention The Conferences of American States, commonly referred to as the Pan-American Conferences, were meetings of the Pan-American Union, an international organization for cooperation on trade. James G. Blaine, a United States politician, Secretary ...

) is an international copyright treaty signed in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, Argentina, on 11 August 1910, providing mutual recognition of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

s where the work carries a notice containing a statement of

reservation of rights A reservation of rights, in American legal practice, is a statement that an individual, company, or other organization is intentionally retaining full legal rights to warn others of those rights. The notice avoids later claims that one waived legal ...

(Art. 3). This was commonly done with the phrase "

All rights reserved "All rights reserved" is a copyright formality indicating that the copyright holder ''reserves'', or holds for its own use, all the rights provided by copyright law. Originating in the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, it is unclear if it has any ...

copyright notice In United States copyright law, a copyright notice is a notice of statutorily prescribed form that informs users of the underlying claim to copyright ownership in a published work. Copyright is a form of protection provided by US law to author ...

. This implementation varied as

US law The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as va ...

only required the author and year of publishing. Copyright protection under the convention is granted for the shorter of the terms of the protecting country and the source country of the work (" rule of the shorter term", Arts. 6, 7). The rather vague nature of the requirement for a statement of reservation led to the development of longer and more legalistic wordings, which have persisted despite the developments in

international copyright law While no creative work is automatically protected worldwide, there are international treaties which provide protection automatically for all creative works as soon as they are fixed in a medium. There are two primary international copyright agree ...

. The convention is specifically retained by the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) of 6 September 1952 (Art. 18 Geneva Act), with the most recent formulation taking precedence in case of conflict. As the Buenos Aires Convention was not modified, the presence of a simple copyright notice was sufficient to ensure mutual recognition of copyright between countries which became parties to the UCC (which only

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

never did). As of , all parties to the Buenos Aires Convention are also parties to the

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of leg ...

, which provides for mutual recognition of copyright without any formalities (Art. 5.2 Berne). The Buenos Aires Convention became a "special agreement" in the terms of Article 20 of the Berne Convention. It remains in force, notably for determining the source country of a work and hence the term of protection which is applicable in countries which apply the "rule of the shorter term": when a work is simultaneously published in a Convention State and a non-Convention State, the Convention State will be taken to be the source country regardless of the term of protection in the non-Convention State. ''Sources'': U.S. Copyright Office,

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

WIPO The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishin ...

References

Geneva Act of the Universal Copyright Convention
done at Geneva, 1952-09-06.

(Paris Act), as amended on 1979-09-28. # The United States has never applied the rule of the shorter term: all copyright works are protected for the normal U.S. term of copyright. # The United States deposited its Instruments of Ratification with the Government of Argentina on 1911-05-01, and hence the treaty came into force with respect to the other parties three months after that date (Art. 16). The treaty was not proclaimed in the United States until 1914-07-13. #
International Copyright Relations of the United States
, U.S. Copyright Office Circular No. 38a, August 2003.
Parties to the Geneva Act of the Universal Copyright Convention
as of 2000-01-01: the dates given in the document are dates of ratification, not dates of coming into force. The Geneva Act came into force on 1955-09-16 for the first twelve to have ratified (which included four non-members of the Berne Union as required by Art. 9.1), or three months after ratification for other countries.
Parties to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
as of 2006-05-30.

External links

{{wikisource, Buenos Aires Convention
Text of the Convention
Intellectual property treaties History of Buenos Aires Copyright treaties Treaties concluded in 1910 Treaties entered into force in 1914 Treaties of Argentina Treaties of Bolivia Treaties of the First Brazilian Republic Treaties of Chile Treaties of Colombia Treaties of Costa Rica Treaties of the Dominican Republic Treaties of Ecuador Treaties of Haiti Treaties of Guatemala Treaties of Honduras Treaties of Nicaragua Treaties of Mexico Treaties of Panama Treaties of Paraguay Treaties of Peru Treaties of the United States Treaties of Uruguay 1910 in Argentina 1910s in Buenos Aires