ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, for reasons already expounded in the previous chapters, the empires of East and Southeast Europe were reluctant to join the newly created international structures for the protection of intellectual property. Aiming in the first place at maintaining equilibrium within their own fragile imperial realms and fostering their own circuits of communication and exchange of information, they eschewed a precipitated accession into the emerging structures of international IP regulation. This condition changed radically with the end of WWI, when, as a result of the post-war Versailles settlement, the newly created nation states of East Central and Southeast Europe were brought practically en groupe into the Berne Union. This chapter analyses the development of copyright in conjunction with the consolidation and internationalization of the West and Central European book industries in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores models, modalities and geographies of expansion of the book trade, highlighting the interdependence between commerce, culture and geopolitical sway. Consequently, it concentrates on the arrangements of the post-WWI peace settlement, which effected the purposeful expansion of the BU regime into East Central and Southeast Europe.
