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overseas law This page deals with international intellectual property agreements and legislation in other countries, both of which increasingly drive developments in Australia.      Berne Intellectual property protection in Australia, as in all advanced economies, reflects international agreements such as the Berne Convention that establish basic standards for IP protection and seek to harmonise the legal regimes of individual countries. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary & Artistic Works (Berne) is the key  copyright agreement, dating from 1886 and revised several times. It establishes basic categories for copyright protection, rights and the duration of copyright protection.  The growth of broadcasting and other media in the first half of last century resulted in establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - headquartered in Geneva and traditionally one of the more comfortable parts of the sprawling United Nations bureaucracy - and supplementary agreements, notably the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms & Broadcasting Organizations (Rome) and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms (Paris). More recently the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances & Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) have updated Berne and Rome conventions in an attempt to catch up with technologies such as the Internet.  Like most nations, Australia has not yet signed or ratified the WCT or WPPT, although the Digital Agenda legislation - noted below -  is consistent with those treaties.  For the development of the Berne Convention we recommend Sam Ricketson's magisterial The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary & Artistic Works (London, Kluwer 87). Paul Goldstein's excellent International Copyright: Principles, Law & Practice (New York, Oxford Uni Press 01) offers a more accessible account.      WIPO and WTO WIPO operates in tandem - one critic describes the relationship as a horizontal tango - with the more recent and arguably more powerful World Trade Organization (WTO), the multilateral trade body dealing with the 1995 Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) and other global trade treaties that replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT) in 1995.  TRIPS covers copyright and industrial property (eg patents, trademarks, designs); non-compliance by WTO member countries may lead to trade sanctions. TRIPS reflects rather than supersedes the Berne Convention. It has implicitly forced all developed economies and all but a handful of developing economies to abide by Berne, replacing the weaker Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) that was relied upon by the US in particular until a few decades ago. We've highlighted consequences in the 'Duration' page of this guide. Christopher Arup's The New World Trade Organization Agreements: Globalizing Law Through Services & Intellectual Property (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 00) provides a detailed introduction to the evolving WTO-WIPO relationship. It is not an easy read but is worth the effort. There's a broader perspective in the exemplary Global Business Regulation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 00) by John Braithwaite & Peter Drahos. The Regulation of International Trade (London, Routledge 99) by Michael Trebilcock & Robert Howse is also of value in understanding global regulatory regimes. Christopher May's A Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights: The New Enclosures? (London, Routledge 00) considers debates about the nature and regulation of intellectual property in the networked economy. We've highlighted other writings in the North-South page of this guide. Anne Krueger edited The WTO As An International Organization (Chicago, Uni of Chicago Press 98), an excellent institutional study. John Jackson's The World Trading System: Law & Policy of International Economic Relations (Cambridge, MIT Press 97) and The Jurisprudence of GATT & the WTO (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 00) are dry; not recommended unless you are a specialist. The Political Economy of the World Trading System: From GATT to WTO (Oxford, Oxford Uni Press ) by Bernard Hoekman & Michael Kostecki complements Drahos' Global Business Regulation.       USA and the Digital Millennium The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), now in effect, resulted from a decade of often heated debate and criticism of reports or proposals.  Intellectual Property & the National Information Infrastructure, the detailed 1995 report of the US Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, a subgroup of the Information Infrastructure Task Force that led to the DCMA, is available online. The US Association of Research Libraries has a page devoted to the DMCA. For a business perspective see Mark Radcliffe's overview in the Journal of Internet Law and Jonathan Band's article in the Stanford Law Review. Pamela Samuelson critiqued US proposals for what became the DCMA in The Copyright Grab, a characteristically biting article in January 1996. A more rounded description is provided by Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age (New York, Aspen 00) by Mark Lemley & Robert Merges and by Ernest Samuels' 1999 paper Rights On The Net: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.       the EU Similar legislation is underway in the EU, with a revised draft Directive on Copyright & Related Rights In The Information Society passed by the EU Parliament in mid-February 2001. Thomas Dreier produced The Current Copyright Landscape in the Age Of The Internet & Multimedia, a detailed report on the first version of the EU Directive. The EC Green Paper preceding that Directive is here. Terence Prime's European Intellectual Property Law (Aldershot, Dartmouth 00) is one of the better introductions. Papers in Legal Convergence in the Enlarged Europe of the New Millennium (Hague, Kluwer 00) edited by Paul Torremans are particularly valuable. Later pages of this guide highlight particular issues, such as protection for indigenous culture in the age of the internet, and some of the more significant writing about IP principles and developments.    next page (agencies)