Newsletter
US-TAIWAN COPYRIGHT AGREEMENT GIVES RETROACTIVE PROTECTION
Apart from the Copyright Law, Article 4 of which applies the principles of reciprocal treat-ment and first publication, the most important instruments providing a legal basis for copyright protection of works of foreign authors and the ones most often overlooked in court practice are the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navi-gation with Accompanying Protocol between the Republic of China and the United States of America which took effect on 13 November 1948, and the Agreement for the Protection of Copyright Between the Coordination Council for North American Affairs and the American In-stitute in Taiwan (US-Taiwan Copyright Agreement), which took effect on 16 July 1993.
There has been wide disagreement in practice as to whether the US-Taiwan Copyright Agreement applies to works of foreign authors which were first published, or copyright in which was as-signed, before the agreement came into force. In the past, the competent authority and some courts took the view that the Agreement could not be applied retroactively, citing the principle that treaties are not retroactive in effect. But in a 1997 criminal judgment, the Supreme Court held that the principle of retroactive protection should apply. In its ruling, the Court stated that Article 16 Paragraph 2 of the US-Taiwan Copyright Agreement provides for retroactive protection, and that during the drafting of the Agreement no attempt was made to exclude from protection works in which copyright was acquired before the Agreement came into force. This interpreta-tion by the Supreme Court has a very far-reaching implications for the protection of works of foreign authors.