US embassy cable - 03TEGUCIGALPA1689

UNCLAS TEGUCIGALPA 001689 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EB/IPC: Susan Wilson 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: KIPR, ECON, ETRD, HO 
SUBJECT:  HONDURAS: WIPO COPYRIGHT TREATIES ARE IN EFFECT 
 
REF: STATE 174496 
 
1.  On July 10 EconOff delivered reftel demarche to 
Marvin Discua, head of the GOH's Intellectual Property 
Rights office.  Discua confirmed that Honduras became 
party to both the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO 
Performances and Phonograms Treaty on May 20, 2002.  He 
further explained that under Honduran law, such treaties 
are self-executing, and that no additions or changes to 
national law are necessary for the treaties to acquire 
the full force of law.  While in some cases the GOH will 
write rules to provide for the clear implementation of a 
treaty, Discua stated that, in his opinion, the WCT and 
WPPT were already sufficiently clear, and writing an 
additional layer of rules was not necessary.  He said 
that there have been no problems with the implementation 
of the treaties. 
 
2.  Comment: Post has received no complaints from U.S. 
companies operating in Honduras pertaining to the issues 
covered by the two treaties.  EconOff forwarded reftel's 
recommendation that `self-execution' of the treaties 
should be considered insufficient, but Discua made clear 
that the GOH does not believe there is further 
legislative work to be done on this issue.  End comment. 
 
PALMER