Before the Berne Convention, national copyright laws applied for works created within each country. For example a work published in Hungary by a Hungarian national would be covered by copyright there, but could be copied and sold by anyone in Germany. To solve this problem, the Berne Convention set up an international legal system in 1886. It has over 170 parties as of today, a truly global copyright agreement. It has created the system of equal treatment for the nationals of the Berne Union.