Marrakesh VIP Treaty

Not to be confused with Marrakesh Agreement.

Marrakesh VIP Treaty

Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works to Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities
Type	Multilateral
Signed	28 June 2013 (2013-06-28)
Location	Marrakesh, Morocco
Condition	Ratification of 20 states
Signatories	79
Parties	14
Depositary	World Intellectual Property Organization

The Marrakesh VIP Treaty (formally the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities, colloquially MVT) is a treaty adopted in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 28 June 2013.

The treaty focuses on copyright exceptions to facilitate the creation of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works. It sets a norm for countries ratifying the treaty to have a domestic copyright exception covering these activities, and allowing for the import and export of such materials. The full text of the treaty is available on the WIPO website.

Fifty-one countries signed the treaty as of the close of the diplomatic conference in Marrakesh. The ratification of 20 states is needed for the treaty to go into effect.

The treaty is the second international trade treaty associated with Marrakesh, the other being the Marrakesh Agreement which established the World Trade Organization in 1994.

India ratified the treaty on 24 July 2014 and was the first country to do so. El Salvador, Mali, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay also ratified in 2014. In 2015, the treaty was ratified by Argentina, Paraguay, Singapore and Mexico.

On 27 March 2014, Israel passed legislation implementing the Marrakesh VIP Treaty. The Israeli implementing legislation is broader than the language of the treaty in a number of ways.

As of 6 July 2014, 79 countries had signed the Treaty. In March 2015, an unusually harsh statement by the Council of the European Union accused the European Commission of delaying the adoption of the treaty by EU and called upon the Commission "to submit without delay the necessary legislative proposal".

Dr Paul Harpur, law lecturer at the University of Queensland, as part of a series of papers on accessibility, has argued that the Marrakesh Treaty represents a paradigm shift in how the copyright world approaches accessibility and persons with print disabilities. Even though the Marrakesh Treaty is a positive step, Harpur and Suzor argue that more needs to be done to fully recognise persons with disabilities right to read as posited in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

External links

• The full text of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (English) in the WIPO Lex database — official website of WIPO.