ARMONIZACIÓN DE LOS DERECHOS DE AUTOR EN LA COMUNIDAD ANDINA: HACIA UN NUEVO RÉGIMEN COMÚN

Abstract

The Andean Community, which started late in the sixties, is one of the main processes of integration in Latino America, that currently involves Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. In 1993, as part of the process of integration, the Andean Community adopted the Decision 351 that sets forth a common regime on copyright and neighboring rights. That regime was a first step in the legal harmonization on that matter for those countries, which still preserve their domestic law, in so far as it does not infringe the provisions of the Decision. However, the efficiency of the common regime as an instrument for harmonization within the Andean Community has been reduced because of the course of the years, challenges of new technologies, and emerging bilateralism, among other causes. At the same time, even when tolerated by the common regime, significant differences between the domestic law of country members obstacle the proper functioning of the internal, particularly en el context of digital economy. Those circumstances made explicit the need for updating the common regime in order to facilitate the integration of the Andean Community. This article describes briefly the Decision 351, and then analyzes the main limitations of the in force common regime in order to identify the issues that require an urgent legal harmonization within the Andean Community. Then, this article suggests some those issues on which the Andean Community must emphasize its harmonization when updating the common regime-copyright scope, exceptions and limitations, public domain, and copyright enforcement- and makes some recommendations on strategies to achieve that legal harmonization.