Copyright: recognize and prove

Intellectual property issues are gradually entering the picture of the world of our advanced compatriots. Compared with the situation 2-3 years ago, general legal literacy has grown, but there is still room to grow further.

Now on average in the hospital the situation is as follows. There is a general understanding of that:

1. that copyrights, trademarks and patents exist;
2. how do they differ from each other;
3. what protection is given;
4. that in case of violations, you can demand compensation and prohibit the use of your intellectual property;
5. that the amount of compensation can be very significant (thanks to the patent wars of the apple and the stars).

There is no structural and precise understanding:

1. in which cases it is necessary to choose one or other tools to protect your ideas;
2. what can be protected and what is impossible (they often try to protect selling texts, descriptions of goods, just ideas and ways of intellectual activity), but they do not understand that individual objects can be protected;
3. when to start protection, at what period of development of the project it is advisable to use one or another tool;
4. how to behave in case of violation;
5. what documents need to be prepared in advance to get the rights to the results of their creative work.

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I would like to dwell on the last paragraph, because this is the main mistake of the creators of intellectual products. It takes place in the first stages and is difficult to fix with hindsight. And what is the saddest thing is that this error is the most expensive for the authors, and a great number of myths and delusions spread about the registration of rights. We will not dwell on specific examples to refresh them in memory, just look at the top errors here ( http://geektimes.ru/post/173265/ ) and about registering computer programs.

Let's discuss how to fix them.
First of all, it is necessary to understand the simple truth - there are two big differences between the states “I have copyrights” and “I can prove my rights”.

The law establishes a rule that states that copyright arises from the moment the works are created (be it design, program code, drawings, photos, videos, etc.) and do not depend on formalities.

However, the successful enforcement of rights will depend on compliance with the formalities. After all, if you say that someone violated your rights, you must first prove the existence of these rights.

How will you prove right? Simple statements that I did it will not be enough.

My source code is already better and it can be enough if you are the author yourself, working without involving co-authors and confirming your rights. It would be good to confirm additionally the time of their creation from independent sources or uploading files to independent Internet resources. Publication of works, including on the Internet, is even better suited to confirm the emergence of rights.

If you claim that you got the rights from the executor of a legal entity, a freelancer or your employee, then you cannot do without contracts confirming the transfer of rights. Otherwise, you simply cannot prove your rights and, therefore, cannot protect them.

This is where the torment and torment begins. What type of contract to choose? Where to get the text? Even if the company has its own lawyer, he usually refuses to take responsibility for the registration of intellectual property.

I will give the floor to Cyril Mityagin:

We have already tried to take the first step of the help under the name “Hacked order contract” and it must be admitted that it turned out to be very successful.

However, in the process of discussing the treaty in the comments it turned out that the usual pattern, though it provides a basis for understanding - which issues need to be settled in the contract and how they are usually regulated - still cannot take into account many possible options. In addition, the Word file is not very convenient to use if you put in it even a part of the possible options.
Nevertheless, the template went into mass use and several times we received our “Zahabrenny agreement” from different sources for approval.

We were thinking of making several more types of contracts, but the inconvenience of using a template stopped us in this rush. But all this was before the acquaintance with the service Freshdoc.

Today we are presenting a whole package of interrelated custom documents on Habré, which together allow an average studio or a software company to completely cover their risks associated with copyright. Naturally, while respecting the integrated approach.

Welcome to our special project: " The End of Lawlessness ".

(c) Kirill Mityagin