rights enjoyed is made dependent on domestic law or international conventions, such as the Bern Convention on Intellectual Property of 1889, the Acts of Paris of 1896, the Berlin Convention of 123 1908, the Rome Convention of 1928, etc. Thus the rights enjoyed by a stateless person under Article 14 (especially, in countries other than that of his habitual residence) may change if he moves from one country to another, depending on the domestic law of the country and its adherence to international conventions. 3. Article 14 of the Refugee Convention introduced the concept of “habitual residence” as a requirement for the exercise of the rights to which it refers, contrary to the Ad Hoc Committee draft, which spoke of “resident(s)”. The change was made to denote that a stay of short duration was not sufficient. On the other hand, the exercise of the right was not made dependent on “permanent residence” or on “domicile” because it was felt that it was a too far-reaching concept 124 for the enjoyment of civil rights. “Habitual residence” means residence of a certain duration, but 125 it implies much less than permanent residence. Thus, to enjoy the rights stipulated in Article 14, a stateless person need not have in the country a permanent residence but only a residence of sufficiently long duration to consider him as locally connected with the country. A stateless person may have several such residences (although such instances would be rather rare in view of their specific status). In that case they would enjoy in every one of them the same rights as a national of each of these countries. The difficulty will arise if a stateless person claims rights outside these countries: which habitual residence of the several should be taken as a basis? The proper solution would be to grant the stateless person the most favourable treatment under the choice of several statuses. A stateless person possessing no habitual residence in any Contractual State is entitled to the protection within the limitations of Article 7 (1). i.e., to the same extent as aliens generally are accorded such rights. 4. The scope of the application of Article 14 does not create any doubts: it is the totality of 126 creations of the human mind. These rights have lately become differentiated from the ordinary 127 property rights. Since they have a broader international circulation than ordinary property, a number of international conventions have been concluded to protect the rights of the creators of these products, to which reference was made above. 5. Neither Article 14 nor the convention as a whole deals with the rights which a stateless person illegally in a Contracting State would enjoy under a provision requiring lawful stay or 128 habitual residence. It would seem that the only rights such stateless persons could claim are 129 those to which Article 7 (1) refers. Article 15 Right of association As regards non-political and non-profit-making associations and trade unions the Contracting States shall accord to stateless persons lawfully staying in their territory 123 A difficulty may arise if, under the relevant convention, rights granted to foreigners are conditional on the possession of a nationality (for instance, the Bern Convention). It would seem that Art. 14 is clear in its purpose, i.e., the lack of a nationality cannot be a reason for denying him any rights which a national of the country of the habitual residence of the stateless person enjoys, otherwise the whole article would be meaningless. 124 SR.7, p. 20; SR.8, p, 6. 125 SR.23, p. 26 of the Refugee Conference. 126 E/1618, Comments to Article 9 127 Cf. Article 27 (2) as contrasted with Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 128 129 The question was raised in connection with access to courts but no decision was taken thereon (SR.5, p. 16). See the Comments to this provision.