Related rights: general provisions on some uses of copyright objects
Received in recent months a wide resonancethe fight against the illicit distribution of audiovisual products on the Internet is legitimate. And it is based more on the civil institution "Neighboring Rights". However, not everyone understands the true meaning and content of this legal sub-sector. Therefore, we should consider it in detail.
Concept and objects of related rights
In most relevant legalresearch this institution is presented as a set of rights, close and related to copyright. To understand this relationship, it is necessary to uncover objects of related rights. To those it is customary to include the following:
- execution of copyright objects - regardless of what they represent: a literary or poetic work, a musical composition, etc .;
- recording of musical or other sound works on a medium (phonograms);
- production of television, radio and Internet broadcasting.
If you refer to the essence of each of theseobjects, then we can conclude that none of them fall under the category of copyright. This statement is due to the fact that, despite the presence of the element of creativity, they are not finished works created independently. So, a good example is a musical work. Music and poetry can be written by the singer of the song, but the situation is quite common where the rights to these components were acquired from third parties. In the first case, copyrights and related rights coincide, and in the second case, the case of the institution of neighboring rights occurs. The same applies to the performance of literary works in the audio format.
Proceeding from the above, related rights are a special legal institution aimed at providing legal regulation of the field of transfer of copyright objects.
Legitimate protection of related rights
Speaking about the legal protection of theinstitute, it should be clear that copyright and related rights are divided in terms of the universality of the emergence and spread of their protection. In the case of copyright, one must speak of protection from the moment the work was created. And regardless of where it was created, the author has the opportunity to effectively enjoy their rights in all countries.
Related rights are subject to a different legal regimeprotection. Thus, in 1961 the international community adopted a convention in Rome, which requires all acceding parties to provide an equal protection regime for residents of these countries. It follows that if a state is not a member of this convention, then the subject of the sub-sector in question is not entitled to protection until its status as a subject of neighboring rights is registered in the appropriate order.
In any case, the state provides the subject with three options for the protection of related rights - administrative, civil law or criminal law.
Civil-law protection allows appealing to the competent authorities with a statement, one of the requirements of which may be:
- recognition of related rights for a strictly defined person;
- cessation of acts that contribute to or provoke violation of neighboring rights.
Administrative and criminal defense may beapplied in the event that significant damage was caused, the scope of which is established by the relevant legislation. In this case, it is not uncommon for the institution of the statement of claim to be used in criminal proceedings to claim lost profits and compensate for the damage.
Adjacent rights, as it became clear, are a kind of way of commercializing copyright objects. Therefore, the value of studying and developing this sub-sector of law is undeniable.
