Luxembourg, 28/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The United Kingdom's argument that the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works comes under international law and the competence of the Member States and does not come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice is unfounded, ruled the Court of Justice in a case brought by the Commission against Ireland. Experts see the case as a curious one in that Ireland never challenged the idea that it had to abide by the Convention and even "informed the Commission that the draft legislation on intellectual property was at an advanced stage of its scrutiny". The Commission refused to accept Ireland's good faith and took it to the Court of Justice.
During the trial, however, the UK intervened, claiming the Court had no jurisdiction over the case in question because the Convention came under international law and the competence of Member States cannot be reviewed by the Court. This was rejected by the Court: "In the present case, there can be no doubt that the provisions of the Berne Convention cover an area which comes in large measure within the scope of Community competence". It went on: "The protection of literary and artistic works… is to a very great extent governed by Community legislation in matters as diverse as the legal protection of computer programmes, rental and lending rights within the area of intellectual property, the protection of copyright applicable to satellite broadcasting and cable retransmission, the legal protection of databases or the terms of protection of copyright and certain related rights". The Court noted that it had already rules that copyright and related rights fell within the scope of application of the Treaty in the 1993 Phil Collins case