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administration of various multilateral treaties dealing with the legal and
administrative aspects of intellectual property. Intellectual property comprises
two main branches: (1) industrial property, chiefly in inventions, trademarks,
industrial designs, and appellations of origin; and (2) copyright, chiefly in
literary, musical, artistic, photographic and audiovisual works.

Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of the work are lawful
only if they are done with the authorization of the owner of the copyright. As
explained by WIPO in International Protection of Copyright and Neighboring
Rights, the most typical are the following:

"the right to copy or otherwise reproduce any kind of work; the right to
distribute copies to the public; the right to rent copies of at least certain
categories of works (such as computer programs and audiovisual works); the right
to make sound recordings of the performances of literary and musical works; the
right to perform in public, particularly musical, dramatic or audiovisual works;
the right to communicate to the public by cable or otherwise the performances of
such works and, particularly, to broadcast, by radio, television or other
wireless means, any kind of work; the right to translate literary works; the
right to rent, particularly, audiovisual works, works embodied in phonograms and
computer programs; the right to adapt any kind of work and particularly the
right to make audiovisual works thereof."

Under some national laws, some of these rights - which together are referred to
as 'economic rights' - are not exclusive rights of authorization but, in certain
specific cases, merely rights to remuneration. In addition to economic rights,
authors (whether or not they own the economic rights) enjoy 'moral rights' on
the basis of which authors have the right to claim their authorship and require
that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with
other uses thereof, and they have the right to oppose the mutilation or
deformation of their works.

Started in July 1993, the International Trade Law (ITL) Monitor was one of the
very first law-related WWW sites, and the first dedicated to a particular area
of law. The site is run by Ralph Amissah, and hosted by the Law Faculty of the
University of Tromso, Norway. The section relating to Protection of Intellectual
Property gives access to various documents, including the European Commission
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