[Upd-discuss] UK government soliciting comments on Casting Treaty

[David Tannenbaum]

This just in:

A possible new international treaty on the rights of broadcasting
organisations has been under discussion in the WIPO Standing Committee
on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR) since 1998, and during that time a
number of proposals on treaty content and language have been submitted,
by the EU and other delegations. At its last session, SCCR asked its
Chairman (Mr Jukka Liedes of Finland) to prepare a 'consolidated text'
identifying areas of convergence and divergence between the proposals,
so as to focus discussion at the next meeting (7-9 June) in order that a
decision might then be taken on whether work is sufficiently advanced to
recommend convening a Diplomatic Conference in 2005 to conclude a
treaty.

This letter is to inform you that WIPO has just published the
consolidated text, and to invite any comments you may wish to make at
this stage. It would be helpful if we could receive these by the end of
May, in time for consideration before the June meeting of SCCR. The text
is available from the WIPO website at:
http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/meetings/2004/sccr/index_11.htm

If you are unable to access the text in this way, please let us know and
we will provide a copy.

Yours sincerely
/sig/
Roger Knights
Deputy Director

[Ed. note: Contact information for the Copyright division of the Patent
Office in the Department of Trade and Industry is available at
http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/contact.htm.]