Understanding the Business of Entertainment

Chapter 4International Copyright

The Berne Convention

Back in 1873 there was a scientific exhibition in Vienna, Austria, called the International Exhibition of Inventions. People from around the world were invited to participate in what amounted to a kind of world’s fair of science. Some inventors, however, refused to attend because they feared people would steal their inventions and exploit them in their home countries. Yes, intellectual property theft was alive and well in the nineteenth century, and so, not surprisingly, people began to think about the need for an international system of protection.

Only 13 years later, in 1886, a system of international copyright protection emerged with the initial implementation of the Berne Convention ...