Copyright Law

For several years now, our country has been implementing the recently adopted law on copyright. If earlier it was an independent law, now the most important provisions of copyright are included in Part 4 of the Civil Code. Russian law, like the universal copyright convention, speaks about the main mechanisms for protecting copyright , the rights and obligations of authors and performers, and regulates other elements of copyright. To understand how copyright is protected in our country , it is necessary to refer to some basic provisions that contain the copyright law.

Intellectual rights include, on the one hand, exclusive rights, and on the other hand, personal non-property rights. Each of these rights includes several additional ones. The law on copyright says that the authors of the results of intellectual work have the right to dispose of such results at their discretion. Exclusivity of this right is that only authors can dispose of the result of labor and no one else. In turn, this assumes that the result of labor can be used by other citizens only with the consent of the rightholder. It is very important to specify: the law on copyright does not put intellectual rights in dependence on the ownership of the carrier. The same is said about the universal convention on copyright. In other words, if an artist has performed a picture on a canvas belonging to another person, he does not lose his right to dispose of the result.

To the number of personal non-property rights can be attributed such right as the right of authorship. It is quite obvious that the author should be the one who produced, for example, a work of art. However, the legislation stipulates that the author is the one who is listed as such person on the cover of the published work, until it is proved otherwise. How can this be understood? Legislation is aimed at streamlining and regulating relations, which is why laws often contain legal fictions. In the case of the right to authorship, everything is the same. In civil circulation it is very important to determine the person to whom a claim can be made. That is why the law provided that the author is the one who is listed on the cover. Of course, often this can contribute to various forms of fraud. But this is also stipulated in the legislation. Therefore, the person who is the author, but not indicated on the cover as such, can apply to the judicial authorities, where he will prove that it is the author.

Exclusive rights are protected by the state. The need for such protection was realized in the middle of the last century, when the world copyright convention was developed. In the same convention for the first time an international copyright protection mark was introduced, which is known to very many people today. The fact that there is a copyright protection sign on the work means that the art released to the world is protected by the state.

Copyright has received significant development over the past half century. This is due to the fact that the use of the results of intellectual work brings in our time multimillion and sometimes billions in profits. That is why there was a need for copyright protection, so that the misuse of the results of intellectual work could not cause losses. In our country there are still significant problems in the legal protection of authorship. However, a relatively new law, corresponding to all the requirements of international rules, allows us to hope that soon the situation will change in another direction.