Is copyright in IT in the CIS?

The last decade was marked by large-scale development of information technology, which led to the emergence of new social, legal and economic problems. This also applies to the most important issues posed to the modern information society. One of them is the question of creating a comprehensive and balanced legal framework, designed to take into account all the changes made to the fundamental rights.

One of the main problems of adapting copyright in the field of IT has become the possibility of securing the rights of the copyright holder. Naturally, in every developed country, the guarantor of such rights should be the state represented by the bodies of jurisdiction. But it so happened that the jurisdictional authorities found themselves in a difficult situation: a completely new system of relations appeared in the society, which are directly connected with the use of modern technologies. Most of the cases leading to the emergence of various kinds of disputes, require a broad interpretation of legal norms, because the law usually lacks the necessary explanations for the specifics of the protection of the rights of the author on the Internet. Thus, IT business owners are increasingly faced with the problem of legal security, which is gaining new dimensions every year.


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Who and how?

To answer the above question about the creation of a legal framework, one should first of all understand the specifics of doing business in the CIS. It's not a secret for a long time that not all citizens in these countries prefer conscientious work for the good of their state, many are simply used to take labor from others. People who belong to the latter category can cause significant damage to your IT company if it suddenly becomes interesting for them for some reason.

Intellectual property. Some legal regulations

Now, actually, about intellectual property. It is sad and sad, but in the CIS it is not in special honor, therefore it is deprived of due legal protection. Naturally, the majority of workers in the field of intellectual work are negative about this fact. It is not strange, because you created something valuable in order to make money on it, but people came who decided to circumvent the law and take it away for free or, even worse, require money for your work. In the case of the selection of a material thing, this process is called the word “theft”, but in the case of an object of intellectual right - the word “use”. This definition applies to legal norms in the CIS. For example, Article 11 of the Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights” states that the copyright to an essay arises from the fact of its creation. For the emergence and execution of copyright does not require registration of the essay or any other special design of it, as well as the execution of any other formalities. The legislative base of the Russian Federation in this regard is practically the same. So, on January 1, 2008, the fourth part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation was enacted , Article 1257 of which reads: “The citizen whose creative work it is created is recognized as the author of a work of science, literature or art. The person specified as the author on the original or copy of the work, is considered its author, unless otherwise proved. ” It turns out that you can create a website without specifying the author's signature (under Ukrainian law, we will be the copyright holders of this site). But then there will be bad uncles who, due to increased interest in our site, will copy it, adding the author's signature with their initials. It turns out that they will have much more opportunities to protect their right to the result of your work. "Inconsistency!" - You say. That's it. For IT, intellectual property is the most valuable, even more valuable than material property!

As you understand, the legislation of the CIS countries states that the creator of an object of intellectual property is the person who invented and then realized this object. The best proof of this fact is the publication of the above object, which is confirmed by a specific date. But if you do not conduct such operations on time, someone can succeed by doing it for you. Under the law, the use for commercial purposes of an object of intellectual property with the infliction of financial damage to its owner is considered a crime that is a criminal offense and provides for imprisonment for a fixed period of time. Naturally, this fact will still need to be proved in court, but, you see, it is better if the creator will file a lawsuit against the attacker rather than the other way around.

Not smaller pitfalls fraught with client business (for example, the provision of IT services to order). Imagine that you are creating a website. The client for the content-filling gave you photos, the author of which, as it turned out later, was not paid for their use. Photography is also an intellectual property that requires copyright protection. In this case, the author of the photos posted on the site is entitled to sue the owner of the Internet resource. So that you do not become the object of court litigation, protect yourself by drafting and signing a service agreement with a client. It should state that the customer is responsible for copyright non-observance, and it is also necessary to document the client's requirements for publishing unprotected content. Thus, the contract for the provision of services - is one of the main tools to combat the encroachment on your rights.

Conclusion:

The main problems in the protection of copyright in IT are associated with the following points:

• opening access to a particular object on the Internet enables it to be used virtually throughout the world. Therefore, sometimes there are cases when copyright objects are used by the Internet user in a territory where the relevant rules of law do not apply;
• after placing an object on the Internet, a problem arises as to the ability to trace by whom and how this copyright object will be used. First of all, this is due to the fact that access to a site, electronic presentation, or other object is opened simultaneously for a wide range of people, which includes millions of Internet users.
• Protecting intellectual property rights in IT is a problem of a national or even global scale. Terabytes of music in thousands of audio devices, stolen content on social networks, a lot of free file hosting - all these are weeds in the way of proper protection of copyright and the fight against piracy. As soon as software support programs for various software appear, countries will get a chance for healing.

Protection methods

The best way to protect intellectual property rights in the field of information technology would be to pate the idea. So developers will get a monopoly on the use of their ideas. But according to the norms of international law, it is possible to patent not ideas, but the results of work. Because otherwise, there would be only monopolies around us: he invented a new door knob - forbade its use. But despite this, many applicants tried to patent ideas, not only in the CIS countries, but also in the USA. For example, IBM filed a patent application for income from intellectual property rights. It had the name: “US20070244837 - system of methods for extracting value from a portfolio of assets”. This patenting of the idea was not successful.
But still, how to protect yourself in the harsh conditions of our time?
Some tips for protecting copyright in IT:

1. Register a trademark: trademark logo, as well as the exact name of the company (or product), which will be presented in Latin and Cyrillic versions. After registration, you will receive a state certificate that can protect you in many cases.
2. Be sure to register copyrights for all the results of your work (this is especially important for those cases where the work is replicated).
3. Sign a contract for all work on the creation of intellectual property. So you will receive confirmation that any of these objects will remain the property of the creator until the full repayment of financial obligations under the concluded contract.
4. Remember, if someone changes at least a small part of your site (or other object), he will be able to talk about creating a new site. In this case, you will have to spend a lot of time to prove copyright infringement in court. Therefore, it is important to try to protect the so-called “trade secret”.

Dare, success in the difficult field of IT technologies! Do not drown among sharks, eager to appropriate the results of your intellectual work!