The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty or WIPO Copyright Treaty, was adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 1996. WIPO Copyright Treaty provides additional protections for copyright due to advances in information technology. Criticism of this treaty, like its prohibition of circumvention of technical protection measures, even where such circumvention is used in the pursuit of legal and fair use rights, and the ccriticism that it applies a 'one size fits all' standard to all signatory countries. WIPO Copyright Treaty ensures that computer programs are protected as literary works and that the arrangement and selection of material in databases. Copyright Law covers both published and unpublished works. Copyright is an Intellectual Property Right and subsists in a range of creative, intellectual, or artistic forms.
WIPO Copyright Treaty also prohibits circumvention of technological measures for the protection of works and unauthorised modification of rights management information. WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in United States law through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
WIPO Copyright Treaty provides authors of works with control over their rental and distribution which they may not have under the Berne Convention alone. During the earlier stage of negotiations, the WCT was seen as a protocol to the Berne Convention, constituting an update of that agreement since the 1971 Stockholm Conference.
The collapse of negotiations around the extension of the Berne Convention during the 1980s saw the shifting of the forum to the GATT, resulting in the TRIPS Agreement. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center offers clauses, rules and neutrals for the following Alternative Dispute Resolution Procedures: Mediation: a non-binding procedure in which a neutral intermediary, the mediator, assists the parties in reaching a settlement of the dispute. WIPO Mediation Rules.