In a notice from the Author’s Copyright Bureau, the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information advised its subordinate agencies to actively review and revise their working plans concerning the use and publication of foreign literary and artistic works in Vietnam before the Berne Convention comes into force, which has been scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2004.

The decision to become a member of the Berne Convention was signed by President Tran Duc Luong on May 7, 2004.

Vietnamese agencies, organizations, and enterprises that use literary and artistic works of foreign individuals or organizations are obliged to contact and agree to the owners’ terms so as to avoid unnecessary disputes, the Bureau’s letter stressed.

It also suggests that Vietnamese agencies, organizations, and enterprises thoroughly use local authors’ literary and artistic works as well as foreign literary and artistic works of which the term of protection, described as the life of the author and fifty years after his death, is over.

This, the letter said, will help avoid the lack of literary and artistic works for the people.

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, adopted in Berne, Switzerland in 1886, first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations.

The Berne Convention provides that each contracting state recognizes copyrighted works authored by nationals of other contracting states. Copyright under the Berne Convention is automatic: no registration or inclusion of a copyright notice is required.

The Berne Convention provides a minimum term of copyright protection for the life of the author plus fifty years, but parties are free to agree to longer terms of copyright protection, as the European Union did with the 1993 Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection. The United States followed with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

The Berne Convention has been administered by the WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) since 1967.

Reported by Tr.A. – Translated by The Vinh.