The addition of resale right to the WIPO agenda

After a busy week marked by lobbing activities and meetings in Geneva, it is a fundamental step in the campaign for the broadening of this important right to all the areas of the world. The decision was taken after co-organised actions by the CISAC, EVA and the GESAC on occasion of the SCCR session of WIPO. At a parallel event, a university report a university report ordered by the CISAC was presented by Professor Sam Ricketson (Melbourne university), about the necessity to develop a new international Resale Right Treaty. A representative of the Chinese Government, Mr. Cike Yu (General Director of the copyright management Department of the National Copyright Administration of China) joined Mr. Ricketson and declared that his government supported the implementation of resale right in China. The visual artists Hervé Di Rosa (France) and José de Guimarães (Portugal) shared their points of views with a large audience of delegates of WIPO Member States. A detailed description of the event is available on the CISAC website.
Furthermore, a meeting was organised with the General Director of WIPO, Francis Gurry, in order to get his support for the campaign. The delegation who met Gurry was made of the following members: the General Director of the ADAGP, Marie-Anne Ferry-Fall, the General Secretary of EVA (European Visual Artists), Carola Streul, Hervé Di Rosa, Sam Ricketson and the General Director of the CISAC, Gadi Oron.
The representatives of the CISAC pledged to make intense lobbying efforts notably by organising several meetings with representatives of the Member States, in order to coordinate a broad support and thus to start formal and technical discussions on the resale right during the plenary session. All these efforts were awarded when the delegate of Congo formally asked for the addition of resale right on the SCCR agenda, supported by Senegal, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Brazil, Iran and the European Union.
Canada, by adopting the same position as the United States of America, expressed its general support to the addition of new points on the SCCR agenda, without clearly supporting or opposing the resale right. Swiss indicated that it was ready to discuss about resale right, while Japan declared that it could not support the proposition, underlining that the Berne Convention was flexible enough for the countries who wanted to implement it.
The SCCR decision to start discussions on the next plenary session (December 2015) is a significant accomplishment and an excellent results for visual artists and their societies.
For further information about the campaign, the brochure about resale right for visual artists is available in English, French, Spanish and Chinese.