Situation in The United States
When the United States joined the Berne Convention, Congress explicitly declared that the treaty was not self-executing in the United States in the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, section 2 (BCIA, Pub. L. 100-568). The BCIA made clear that within the U.S., only U.S. copyright law applied, and that U.S. copyright law, as amended by the BCIA, implemented the requirements of the Berne Convention (although it did not implement §18(1) of the Berne Convention, a deviation that was corrected by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) in 1994).
This statement from public law 100-568 is repeated in the U.S. Copyright law in 17 USC 104, which assimilates foreign works to domestic works and which furthermore states in 17 USC 104(c) that
No right or interest in a work eligible for protection under this title may be claimed by virtue of, or in reliance upon; the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. Any rights in a work eligible for protection under this title that derive from this title, other Federal or State statutes, or the common law, shall not be expanded or reduced by virtue of, or in reliance upon, the provisions of the Berne Convention, or the adherence of the United States thereto. – 17 USC 104(c)Any requirements from the Berne Convention thus needed to be spelled out explicitly in the U.S. Copyright law to make them effective in the United States. But Title 17 of the United States Code does not contain any article on the rule of the shorter term. The only mention of such a rule was added in 1994 with the URAA in 17 USC 104A, which automatically restored copyrights on many foreign works, unless these works had already fallen in the public domain in their country of origin on the URAA date, which is January 1, 1996 for most foreign countries. Because there is no general rule of the shorter term in U.S. Copyright law, U.S. courts have declined to apply that rule on several occasions.
Read more about this topic: Rule Of The Shorter Term
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