[free-sklyarov] Re-Russian copyright law.

[Igor Motsnyi]

"I am doing research, and I would appreciate it if someone could tell me
whether Russian copyright law gives the exclusive right to copyright holders
to permit or deny the distribution of their copyrighted works of authorship.
I would like also to have a formal citation for this (i.e., in the Russian
code).  Any help would be appreciated".

Erik,

Russian copyright law 1993 (Copyright and Related rights law) indeed grants 
the exclusive rights to the copyright holders to authorize the distribution, 
reproduction, comunnication to the public, etc of their works (Art 16).

However, as I have stated in one of my previous messages the situation is 
slightly different under the employment contract.
If the work is created in the course of employment the person who actually 
creates the work has MORAL RIGHTS on his creation (i.e. the right to claim 
authorship) but all the ECONOMIC RIGHTS belong to his EMPLOYER (Art. 14 of 
the Copyright and Related rights law). Therefore, under Russian Copyright 
law it is the employer who decides to distribute, communicate to the public 
the work or make use of it in any other way. The employee will always be the 
author but he does not normally have economic benefits out of it (apart from 
his salary). In these kind of relationships the employee transfers the 
exclusive rights to permit or prohibit the use of his work to the employer 
although he is still considered an author.

Igor.


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