The amendments to s. 5 of the new Copyright Act are merely technical and reflect the fact Canada is implementing 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty.

Subsections (1.01), (1.02) and (1.03) of the Act are meant to give retrospective effect to protection of foreign works that may have originated from countries that become parties to international copyright treaties after the creation or the publication of the work in question.

The revised version of these subsections now takes into account that a WCT country also falls under the definition of a “treaty country”.

The practical effect of the amendment is, however, going to be zero, since today there is not a single country on the planet that is a party to the WCT but is not a party to the Berne Convention. Given that there are 165 parties to the Berne Convention and that WCT requires that all WCT members must comply with all substantive provisions of the Berne Convention, this situation is very unlikely to change any time soon.

BOTTOM LINE: Neutral. The changes are purely technical, and will have no practical effect on application of the Act