The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled was adopted in Marrakesh on 27 June 2013 by the diplomatic conference opened on 17 June. A single original, the English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish texts being equally authentic. Depositary: the Director General of WIPO. It is not the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994 establishing the WTO, nor the Berne Convention, which the preamble recalls, nor the WIPO Copyright Treaty.

Article 1: nothing shall derogate from obligations under other treaties. Article 3, at framework level: beneficiary persons — persons who are blind, who have a visual impairment or a perceptual or reading disability which cannot be improved to a substantially equivalent visual function, and who, through physical disability, are unable to hold a book or to follow the lines. Article 4: parties shall provide in their national copyright laws a limitation or exception to the rights of reproduction, distribution and making available to the public, to facilitate accessible format copies for beneficiary persons. A conversion or technological-measure circumvention handbook is not transcribed.

Articles 5–6: cross-border exchange and importation of accessible format copies, still at framework level, through authorized entities, without describing an operational circuit. Article 7: legal protection against circumvention of technological measures shall not prevent beneficiary persons from enjoying the limitations and exceptions provided for in this Treaty. Article 8: privacy on an equal basis. Article 11 recalls the three-step test in Berne, TRIPS and the WCT.

Article 15: any WIPO Member State may become party; the Assembly may admit intergovernmental organizations; the European Union made the declaration at the Conference. Article 17: open for signature at the Conference, and thereafter at WIPO headquarters for one year after adoption. Article 18: it enters into force three months after twenty eligible parties have deposited instruments. WIPO: 30 September 2016. Article 20: denunciation taking effect after one year. Article 22: the Director General of WIPO is the depositary.

Cover: the WIPO diplomatic conference in Marrakesh; Archbishop Tomasi in the hall, we do not claim the signing. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: Marrakesh VIP Treaty; Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled.