Stockholm Conference on Intellectual Property

Recommendation 512 (1968)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

Assembly Debate on 31st January 1968 (17th Sitting) (see Doc. 2335, report of the Legal Committee). Text adopted by the Assembly on 31st January 1968 (17th Sitting).

The Assembly,

1. Considering that the literary and artistic works produced by the inhabitants of Europe represent an essential feature of the common heritage of the member countries, to safeguard which is among the aims of the Council of Europe as set out in Article 1 of its Statute ;

2. Emphasising the consequent need to provide adequate safeguards for the rights of intellectual workers, among whom are the authors of literary and artistic works ;

3. Recalling its Order No. 261 of 28th April 1967, instructing the Legal Committee to consider the questions relating to the Stockholm Conference on Intellectual Property and to report back to it,

4. Takes note of the creation of a World Intellectual Property Organisation and expresses the hope that the Council of Europe will maintain and develop the same relations with the new organisation as those it maintained formerly with the BIRPI ;

5. And, having noted both the amendments made at the Stockholm Conference to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Protocol regarding developing countries,

6. Being desirous :

a of ensuring that the whole brunt of the provisions of the Protocol designed to promote the necessary cultural development of certain countries shall not fall entirely on authors ;

b to see the Council of Europe contribute particularly effectively to the protection of the rights of authors,

7. Recommends that the Committee of Ministers invite member Governments :

a in co-operation with the new World Organisation and following a recommendation adopted at Stockholm, to study ways and means and the financial machinery whereby authors could be compensated for the sacrifices which the straightforward application of the provisions of the Protocol as they stand would entail for them ;

b to consider the possibility, within the Council of Europe, of entering into the "special agreements" referred to in Article 20 of the Berne Convention with the object of "granting authors more extensive rights" than those conferred by that Convention.