14. _International Copyright._--Books published in one country and circulated in another depend for their protection in the latter upon international copyright. Until 1886 international copyright in Great Britain rested on a series of orders in council, made under the authority of the International Copyright Act 1844 (superseding acts of 1820 and 1826), conferring on the authors of a particular foreign country the same rights in Great Britain as British authors, on condition of their registering their work in Great Britain within a year of first publication abroad. A condition of the granting of each order was that the sovereign should be satisfied that reciprocal protection was given in the country in question to British authors. As the result of conferences at Bern in 1885 and 1887, this system was simplified and made more general by the treaty known as "The Bern Convention," signed at Bern on the 5th of September 1887. The contracting parties were the British Empire, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Tunis and Hayti. Luxemburg, Monaco, Norway and Japan afterwards joined. Austria and Hungary have a separate convention with Great Britain, concluded on the 24th of April 1893. The notable absentees among European powers are Holland and Russia. So far as the United States is concerned, the matter is regulated by the American copyright acts, which are dealt with separately below.
The basis of the Bern convention was that authors of any of the countries of the Union, or the publishers of works first published in one of them, should enjoy in each of the other countries of the Union the same rights as the law of that country granted to native authors. The only conditions were that the work should comply with the necessary formalities, such as registration, in the country where it was first published, in which case it was exempt from all such formalities elsewhere; and that the protection required from any country should not exceed that given in the country of origin. The rights conferred included the sole right of making a translation of the work for ten years from its first publication. The convention was retrospective; that is to say, it applied to copyright works published before its coming into existence, each country being allowed to protect vested interests, or copies already made by others, as it should think best.