copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

formality indicating that the copyright holder ''reserves'', or holds for its own use, all the rights provided by

copyright law A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

. Originating in the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, it is unclear if it has any legal effect in any jurisdiction. However, it is still used by many copyright holders.

Origins

The phrase originated as a result of the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910. Article 3 of the Convention granted copyright in all signatory countries to a work registered in any signatory country, as long as a statement "that indicates the ''reservation'' of the property ''right''" (emphasis added) appeared in the work. The phrase "all rights reserved" was not specified in the text, but met this requirement. Other copyright treaties did not require this formality. For example, in 1952 the

Universal Copyright Convention The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), adopted in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1952, is one of the two principal international conventions protecting copyright; the other is the Berne Convention. The UCC was developed by the United Nations Educati ...

(UCC) adopted the © symbol as an indicator of protection. (The symbol was introduced in the US by a 1954 amendment to the

Copyright Act of 1909 The Copyright Act of 1909 () was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; b ...

.) The

Berne Convention The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, was an international assembly held in 1886 in the Swiss city of Bern by ten European countries with the goal to agree on a set of le ...

rejected formalities altogether in Article 4 of the 1908 revision, so authors seeking to protect their works in countries that had signed on to the Berne Convention were also not required to use the "all rights reserved" formulation. However, because not all Buenos Aires signatories were members of Berne or the UCC, and in particular the United States did not join UCC until 1955, a publisher in a Buenos Aires signatory seeking to protect a work in the greatest number of countries between 1910 and 1952 would have used both the phrase "all rights reserved" and the copyright symbol.

Obsolescence

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the count ...

became the final member of the Buenos Aires Convention to also become a signatory to the

.Eugene Goryunov
All Rights Reserved: Does Google's "Image Search" Infringe Vested Exclusive Rights Granted Under the Copyright Law?
41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 487 (2008) As of that date, every country that was a member of the Buenos Aires Convention (which is the only copyright treaty requiring this notice to be used) was also a member of Berne, which requires protection be granted without any formality of notice of copyright. The phrase continues to hold popular currency in spite of having no legal effect.

References

{{Authority control English phrases Copyright law Copyright law legal terminology

Origins

Obsolescence

See also

References