Publishing in Foreign Countries
A commenter yesterday brought up the issue of authors who publish in foreign countries. It’s a good point, because freelancers these days do have easy access to foreign markets and regularly publish in those markets. So the question arises - what copyright protection exists and how do they invoke it?
There are two issues related to publishing in foreign markets. The first is the scope of the copyright protection itself, and the second is the contracts that reference those rights.
There are two international treaties that deal with copyright issues - the Berne Convention and the UCC. The US copyright office has a fact sheet on these.
The gist of both these treaties is that the countries who have signed on to these treaties agree to enforce the copyrights of individuals from member countries. This means that if a citizen of the US, who holds a US copyright, publishes an article in Sweden, then Sweden will honor the copyright rights of that US citizen.
While most countries belong to one or the other of these treaties (the US has joined both), not all countries have signed on. If you are considering publishing a piece in a foreign country, check to see if the country in which you will be published is a signatory of one of these treaties.
The second issue involves the contract by which the author grants rights and discusses other terms, such as the all important payment term. Contracts are enforceable under the laws of a variety of jurisdictions, depending on what the contract itself says about which law it is to be enforced under. Particularly when a contract involves parties in different countries, the contract itself should have a clause specifying jurisdiction, and another specifying what law it is subject to. The first preference of an author should be to have jurisdiction in the state in which the author lives, and to have the contract construed under the laws of your home country.
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