Universal Copyright Convention

With the Berne Convention, the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) , is one of the principal international conventions protecting copyright. Adopted at Geneva in 1952 it was amended in Paris in 1971.

It was developed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an alternative to the Berne Convention for those states which disagreed with aspects of it but still wished to participate in some form of multilateral copyright protection  The states included mainly developing countries (and the Soviet Union) who believed that the strong copyright protections granted by the Berne Convention overly benefited developed Western copyright-exporting nations.

Almost all of the states in the world are now either members or members in waiting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) , and they are thus conforming to the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) . Most have also become signatorues to the Berne Convention and so the UCC has now lost much of its significance.