Copyright Issues in Trade Agreements

Les­ley Ellen Harris

Octo­ber 1997

Over the past sev­eral years, we have seen the inclu­sion of pro­vi­sions relat­ing to copy­right in trade agree­ments, a trend that seems to be increas­ing. For Canada, this was first seen as a result of the sign­ing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agree­ment in Jan­u­ary 1989. The Cana­dian Copy­right Act was then amended to require cable and satel­lite com­pa­nies to pay for the retrans­mis­sion of works included in dis­tant broad­cast signals.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 1994, the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Imple­men­ta­tion Act came into force, and the Cana­dian Copy­right Act was again amended to intro­duce a rental right for sound record­ings and com­puter pro­grams (to per­mit copy­right own­ers to autho­rise or pro­hibit the rental of their works). It also increased pro­tec­tion against the impor­ta­tion of pirated copy­right pro­tected works.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 1996, the World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion Agree­ment Imple­men­ta­tion Act came into force, increas­ing the copy­right pro­tec­tion afforded by the Cana­dian Copy­right Act to all World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion coun­tries and pro­tect­ing per­form­ers against boot­leg audio record­ings (unau­tho­rised record­ings of a live event) and unau­tho­rised live trans­mis­sions of their performances.

Fur­ther, the Mul­ti­lat­eral Trade Agree­ment cur­rently under dis­cus­sion attempts to address cer­tain copy­right issues.

Simul­ta­ne­ously with copy­right issues being included in trade agree­ments, the World Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Organ­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to exam­ine chang­ing copy­right norms, espe­cially in light of dig­i­tal media and two new copy­right treaties were adopted by some 160 coun­tries in Decem­ber 1996. Under the aus­pices of WIPO, dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing on impor­tant copy­right mat­ters includ­ing per­form­ers’ rights and data­base pro­tec­tion, and how future copy­right treaties can pro­tect them.

This report ana­lyzes the rela­tion­ship between copy­right, trade agree­ments and inter­na­tional copy­right treaties.

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