Vol 45, No 2 (2023)

The article, based on the analysis of the norms of such branches of law as information law, criminal law and administrative law, as well as the analysis of official explanations of the legislation of the Russian Federation contained in the resolutions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, defines the signs of the following concepts — “knowingly unreliable information”, “knowingly false information”, “information that does not correspond to reality” and “false messages”. It is concluded that from the point of view of semantics, the concepts of “false information” and “unreliable information” contain inherent criteria for determining the invalidity of information — information does not correspond to reality and a person’s knowledge of this fact. In the articles of various normative legal acts, these semantic constructions are reinforced by an addition — this is the “knowingness” of a person’s knowledge about the inconsistency of information with reality.

Statistics show that the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation includes almost two and a half times more crimes related to the use of false information than with the use of false information. The situation is reversed in the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation. Administrative offenses include 3 times more acts related to the use and dissemination of false information than false information. These statistics allow us to conclude that the Criminal Law is inclined mainly to recognize as crimes deception, lies that pose a real public danger and cause harm to the relations protected by criminal law in the field of public security. Such intent actions are committed by a person, he knows about the inconsistency of the information with reality, and also anticipates and allows the occurrence of such consequences.

Information legislation is the most loyal to the use of concepts, regulating public relations related to all the concepts studied in this article — “knowingly unreliable information”, “knowingly false information”, “information that does not correspond to reality”, “false message”. This can be explained by the peculiarities of the formation of the branch of information law, and the complexity of the legal regulation of information relations.

The article, prepared on the basis of the author’s report presented at the III International Scientific and Practical Conference “AVTOR/AUTHOR-2023”, in Moscow on the basis of the UNESCO Department of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, discusses issues related to registration and rights to scientific discoveries. Although the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), concluded at Stockholm on July 14, 1967, states that scientific discoveries are among the subject matter of intellectual property [Article 2 [viii] subparagraph (4)], the issue of registration and legal protection of scientific discoveries is still open. As WIPO defines, scientific discoveries cannot be attributed to either copyright or patent law. But obviously, scientific discoveries objectively exist and they are very important for the scientific knowledge of nature and society. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the history of the issue, various approaches in terms of the legal protection of scientific discoveries. Based on the analysis of the history of the issue and existing approaches to its solution, in terms of registration and legal protection of scientific discoveries, the author’s concept of protection of scientific discoveries is proposed.

An important concept in the system of regulation of copyright and related rights is the concept of free use. Many users confuse free and fair use. However, it should be noted that in Russian practice there is no concept of fair use, it is used in some foreign countries, for example, in the United States of America.

Free use of copyright and related rights is one of the subspecies of fair use, but is not a similar concept.

Free use implies the possibility of using the work, publishing part of it, free listening, etc. At the same time, all forms of free use of copyright and related rights do not imply the possibility of generating income. Thus, any use of the work that involves the receipt of income cannot be free.

Currently, the possibility of free use of copyright and related rights raises many questions and disagreements, including in judicial practice. This necessitates a clearer regulation of the legal grounds for the free use of copyright and related rights. Most disagreements arise in issues related to the free use of copyright and related rights in the form of citation. Courts differ on what percentage of a work’s citations can be considered acceptable within free use.

This article is devoted to issues related to the legal regulation of the free use of copyright and related rights. The problematic and debatable points of this issue are given.

We live in the era of digital transformation. Many scientists believe that today we are experiencing the fourth industrial revolution. The first of these happened due to the discovery of steam energy, the second with the introduction of the conveyor, the third happened thanks to the creation of a computer. The foundation of the fourth was the emergence of digital technologies. Digital transformation has led to the emergence of qualitatively new public goods, interaction with which also leads to the emergence of new legal relations. New objects of these relations, in turn, also need a certain legal regulation. Thus, information transformation has influenced the rapid growth of the digital intellectual property market, significantly increasing the financial assets of the owners of these objects. However, such a rapid emergence of various objects created by intellectual work in the digital environment has also led to various abuses and offenses due to the lack of clear legal regulation. One such fast-growing entity today is non-fungible NFT tokens. The first to use NFTs were creative industry entrepreneurs who sought to increase their income and find new ways to interact with buyers. Despite the rapid rise in popularity, concerns have been raised about the legal ownership of NFT assets and the prevalence of speculation and fraud associated with NFT trading.

From June 1, 2023, an updated version of the national standard GOST R 15.011 “Patent research. Content and Procedure” comes into force in Russia. It establishes requirements for conducting research in the field of intellectual property (according to the Order of Rosstandart No 1080-st dated 07.10.2022 the right of early application of this version is granted).

The purpose of the article is to study the benefits for the users of the standard due to its updating. The article reflects the prerequisites for revision of the regulatory document caused by the complexity of working with the previous edition of GOST R 15.011-96 and discusses the main changes. It shows that the new standard clearly distinguishes the roles of a patent research customer, executor of the work (e.g., a developer of the subject matter) and a party responsible for the patent research (patent department, specialized law firm or independent patent attorney), and, also, the requirements for the latter’s qualification are defined. The advantages of a closed list types of patent research (prior art, patentability research, patent clearance research, targeted patent research), their relationship to the development phases and content guidelines of these types of studies are identified. Further, encountered terminological difficulties, peculiarities of patent studies for software products and regulatory documents, the role of patent landscapes and technical level studies within the framework of prior art research are considered. The features of patent research in the context of the digital transformation were investigated, and their role in the intellectual property management system of the company was analyzed. The results of the work show that the correct use of GOST R 15.011-2022 will greatly simplify the interaction between customers and executors, reduce labor costs, improve the quality of the research and predictability of its content.

This article raises the growing problem of flooding the market with objects created not by man. As a result of the increasing use of artificial intelligence in order to generate new graphic and musical objects, there is a discussion about whether such objects should be considered objects of copyright. At this stage of the development of domestic copyright, this question remains unanswered. The authors, relying on scientific works, current legislation and judicial practice, aim to argue the position that the recognition of objects created by artificial intelligence as a work of science, literature and art, and its author himself is impractical. The authors come to their position through the study of the concept of creativity, associating it with goal-setting. Also, as an argument, the purpose of copyright is given as a set of norms designed primarily to protect human intellectual work. The article predicts the consequences of recognizing the authorship of artificial intelligence, and gives their legal assessment. As an alternative to the protection of such objects by the exclusive right, it is proposed to establish an obligation for bona fide users to indicate that they are not the object of copyright.