Authors’ Moral Rights in the Berne Convention

The statement of moral rights represents the great innovation of the 20th century concerning the protection of intellectual property rights. As it is known, in 1928 in the Review Conference of the Convention of Bern, held in Rome, on proposal of the Italian delegation, art. 6 bis was introduced, which for the first time protects at an international level the moral (or ‘personal’) component of copyright. In this article the authors propose a renewed analysis of Art. 6 bis history, rationale, and scope-including the fact that the ‘‘other’’ moral rights, besides paternity and integrity of the work, were not acknowledged in Rome, nor in the following Berne revisions. This essay ends with a proposal of modification for a future revision of the Convention, a ‘‘leap in quality’’ with the introduction of a general clause conceived in terms of ‘‘burden of valorization’’ of the work on the part of the publisher at the request of the author and according to the concrete circumstances of the case.