INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT CONFERENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 51, 2 March 1909, Page 7

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT CONFERENCE.

♦ AUSTRALIANS IRRITATING FORMALITIES. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. (Received March 2, 8.35 a.m.) LONDON, Ist March. Lord Tennyson, ex-Governor-General of Australia, is a delegate for the Crmmonwealth. to the International Copyright Conference. He states that the provisions of the Australian Act requiring registration of foreign works and their possible manufacture in Australia, are essentially opposed to the new convention, and a mere irritating formality, depriving many works of copyright to which they would otherwise be entitled. It must, ha says, be abandoned before Australia can become a member of tho international union. By the International Act -of 1886 a literary work first produced^ in any part of the British possessions .obtains the benefit of the English copyright laws in the same manner -as if it had beenfirst produced in the United Kingdom, sub'jeot to the copyright laws (if any.) of the particula-r colony. (This does not aply to artistic works, the protection of which does not extend beyond the United Kingdom-). It follows that a work so produced obtains copyright in those foreign countries which are members of the Berne Convention of 1887. The following British colonies have local copyright laws : India, Ceylon, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Natal, Hong Kong, Tasmania, and Newfoundland. Commercial copyright affords protection to the designs of any article of manufacture, by any means applied, whether by printing, weaving, sewing, modelling, embroidering, engraving, staining, etc., whereby the pattern, shape, configuration, or ornamentation of the article is affected.