Copyright Exceptions and Statutory Diversity : The WIPO Study of Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) set in motion in 2004 an examination of limitations and exceptions to the rights of copyright owners. The effort came to a transition point in November of 2008, at a meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, with formal presentations of four studies that had been commissioned by WIPO. One of those studies, conducted and presented by the author of this paper, was a survey of statutory exceptions applicable to libraries and archives in the copyright acts from countries throughout the world. The principal objective of the study was to provide an overview of the nature and diversity of statutory provisions in the copyright laws of the 184 countries that are members of the World Intellectual Property Organization. The library exceptions also offer a meaningful example for understanding the important role that exceptions play in the structure of copyright law. They further exemplify the difficulty of crafting exceptions in a legal environment that is greatly influenced by competing interests and historical and cultural forces. This paper is revised from that report and was prepared for publication in the Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property. The conference was held in Munich, Germany in July 2008