Old Jersey fit to Berne

Victor Hugo would
be pleased ...

By Berne Notification No. 260: Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works the World Intellectual Property Organization announces as follows:

Declaration by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) presents his compliments to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and has the honor to refer to the deposit by the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on September 29, 1989, of its instrument of ratification of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of September 9, 1886, as revised at Paris on July 24, 1971, and amended on September 28, 1979 (see Berne Notification No. 125).

In this respect, the Director General has the honor to notify the deposit, on October 31, 2013, by the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the following declaration:

- "in accordance with Article 31 of the Convention as revised and amended, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland wishes the United Kingdom’s ratification of the Convention, be extended to the territory of the Bailiwick of Jersey [note: this is old Jersey, not to be confused with New Jersey -- the first one that search engines will offer you] for whose international relations the United Kingdom is responsible".

The said declaration shall enter into force, with respect to the territory of the Bailiwick of Jersey, on January 31, 2014".

A small historical side note is that the Berne Convention was very much the result of far-sighted activism on the part of French novelist Victor Hugo -- who lived in exile in Jersey from 1852-1855, when he took the short trip to the neighbouring island of Guernsey, his home from 1855 to 1870.