Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc.

Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82 (2d Cir. 1998).

This case involved a Russian language weekly in New York that copied and published various material from sources in Russia. The issue had to do with the extent to which Russian and American copyright law applied.

The result is contrary to the previous presumption that only the law where the infringement occurred would apply.

National treatment under the Berne Convention merely assures that the national law of infringement will be applied uniformly to foreign and domestic authors; it provides no guidance on the question of ownership. Indeed, the Berne Convention Implementation Act specifically provides that the rights eligible for protection "shall not be expanded or reduced" by virtue of the Berne Convention. 17 U.S.C. 104(c).

In this case it was determined that the ownership of the copyrights were a matter of Russian law because it was "the state with the most significant relationship to the property and the parties". Once the ownership was established U. S. law applied to determine relief for damages since that is where the violations occurred. The effect of the ruling in these immediate circumstances related to the allocation of damages among several plaintiffs, one of whom was found under Russian law to have only very limited rights. The broader effect is in the need to look at foreign law to determine whether a person owns a copyright, and this presumably involves looking at expiry rules that could either accelerate or postpone expiry dates.

Quoted text is from http://www.pattishall.com/pdfs/ChoiceofLawinInternational.pdf