ABSTRACT
On account of its territorial extension, the newborn state of Czechoslovakia that came into being in 1918 incorporated in its realm two different legal systems: on the one hand, Austrian law valid in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and on the other, Hungarian law valid in Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine. This dualism was reflected in the sphere of copyright law as well, where two different legislations encountered each other: the Austrian copyright law of 1895 (amended in 1907) and the Hungarian Law Nr. XVI of February 26, 1884. Being at variance with one another, as much with respect to their scope of application as with their terms of protection, the homogenization of the two laws was duly perceived as a priority. Most significantly, article 20 of the postwar peace treaty, signed on September 10, 1919 in Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, obligated Czechoslovakia to enter the 1886 Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (revised in 1908 in Berlin and amended in 1914 in Berne), 12 months after the signing of the peace agreement. Consequently, the BC became effective in Czechoslovakia on February 22, 1921, and the act was confirmed by law on November 10, 1921 (Nr. 401 Slg.).
