A Study On The System Of Copyright And Adjacent Right Registration Under The Perspective Of International Law

The widely existing formalities of registration and notification are both subject to the copyright registration system. Within the international law, especially international protection for copyright and neighboring rights, the treaties such as Universal Copyright Convention (UCC), Rome Convention and Geneva Convention have required certain formalities in order to provide the protection for works.Historical elements give rise to such formalities of registration and notification. Those historical elements will be discussed in the first chapter with the combination of legal philosophy for the purpose of elaborating the origination reasons and domestic sources for copyright registration system. It has witnessed more than200years before the constitutive formalities of registration and notification begin to be abolished, which is mostly caused by the non-formality principle required by the Berne Convention and TRIPS, especially for their ever-increasing signatories and widening application. But during the process of replacement by the non-formality principle, the resistance from UCC, Rome Convention and Geneva Convention are also non-neglectable. Interestingly, a lot of countries have become the contracting parties of all the treaties said above, which in the end pushes them onto a dilemma. The conflicts among the treaties and the method to resolve such conflicts will be addressed in the second chapter. Apart from the treaties, the domestic resistance from the countries internally is still alive. Take U.S. for instance, its domestic laws still remain the requirements of registration and notification to some extent. The compliance question for U.S. law will be then discussed in the third chapter.In general context, only the constructive meaning of the formalities is referred when discussing the copyright registration system. But that understanding is incomplete. Just as the two sides of a coin, since the copyright registration system has the mandatory sense, it also got the voluntary concern. The current trendy is that while the constructive formalities are abolished, the voluntary copyright registration system is established in a lot of countries. Initially addressed in the third chapter, this voluntary system will be further exploited in the fourth chapter. Such voluntary system may not only be operated by the governmental administrative bodies, but also international organizations, private entities and even individuals. The so-called private registration system now has exceeded its governmental counterpart to certain extent. The fourth chapter will introduce this issue, with the purpose of exhibiting the practice of copyright registration.At last, the emphasis will be laid on the fact of China. The fifth chapter will introduce the China’s voluntary registration system and discuss the demerits thereof. Moreover, this chapter will draw the improvement of the PRC voluntary registration system under the context of the third amendment of China’s Copyright Law.