Beijing WIPO Audiovisual Treaty - Details
FIA Manual on WIPO Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances
In 2012, the member States of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) met at a Diplomatic Conference in Beijing to finalise a new international treaty aiming to extend intellectual property protection to audiovisual performers around the world. The Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances was an outstanding achievement and the result of more than 20 years of determined advocacy work, led by FIA and many other international performer organisations.
The Beijing Treaty grants performers economic rights to improve their livelihoods and derive an acceptable income from the use of their work. It also awards them moral rights to protect their image and reputation. These entitlements had long been acknowledged to audio performers by the international community. However, actors and other performers in the audiovisual industry were deliberately left aside – something that FIA never ceased to decry as a terrible injustice and that became, with time, a very harmful anachronism as many national laws rarely went beyond the minimum international standards and extended full IP protection to all performers.
The WIPO member States may now become parties to the Treaty, which shall become binding as a minimum threshold of 30 ratifications is reached. Of course, many more should follow if the Treaty is to become a true global norm. Audiovisual performers and their representative organisations must therefore campaign for countries to embrace the provisions in the Treaty and make sure their national laws are in compliance with this new standard.
To help them understand what the Treaty is about and how its key provisions may be meaningfully transposed in national laws, FIA has prepared a short manual that seek to turn complex provisions into plain language. We hope that, by answering some of the most likely questions about the Beijing Treaty, we will help performer organisations understand its true potential and the need to campaign with us for the rights of audiovisual performers worldwide. The recognition of our rights is a sign of respect. The future of the Beijing Treaty is in our hands.
The BTAP Manual is now available for download in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian (further printing formats are available upon request to the secretariat):
