FEATURES OF THE METHODS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION IN RUSSIA

ABSTRACT

The relevance of the topic is that the intellectual product is one of the main components of the economic, scientific, industrial potential of the country. The purpose of this work is to highlight the main ways of intellectual property protection and their features. The article is an overview which partially highlights the problematic issues of IP protection in our country and is addressed to a wide range of readers wishing to become familiar with the concept and ways of IP protection.

Keywords: IP, ways of protection, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, trademarks.

The development of mankind is directly connected with improvement of humanintellectual activities. Even despite the fact that the results of mental labor have existed since ancient times, they have recently become an independent part of law. In today’s world the institution of IP law includes literally everything, from production procedures to product release schedules, trade secrets or the list of countries in which specific patents are licensed.

But there is one problem: «The reality is that the representation of IP in the Russian Federation for most engineers, inventors, scientists, artists, businessmen, unfortunately, remains a "blank spot"» [2].

This cannot but be disappointing. The ignorance of people in the field of intellectual activity can cause significant damage to the economy of the country.

Let's look at a few concepts of IP and what it refers to.

The World Intellectual Property Organization defines IP as "the product of the human mind - inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols, names and images used for commercial purposes"[3]. It is also mentioned that thanks to the legal systemsIP is protected.

In addition, we can refer to the legislation of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. So, according to Article 1225, IP is the legally protected results of intellectual activity and means of individualization. They include a total of 16 names, here are some of them: literature and art, broadcasts of radio or television programs, appellations of origin of goods, phonograms, inventions, geographical indications, selection achievements [1].

These definitions make it clear that IP must be protectedand for good reason. The competitive environment in which society is currently developing and being built pushes authors and producers into crimes, which are based on their desire to borrow the fruits of others' thoughts and knowledge. Here the mechanisms, provided by the state and the world community for the protection of their works, come to the aid of the authors. But it's not that simple. As the legislation in this area continues to evolve, the ways to protect IP need to be improved, since there are many ways to get around them, which can lead to serious consequences, such as ruining a company.

It should be mentioned that in our country there are no specialized courts to protect a rights holder of intellectual property. Even judges have noticed the need for specialized courts to protect IP. For example, Judge Vladimir Popov of the Supreme Court at the ATR 2021 forum noted that the number of cases related to the protection of intellectual property rights has doubled in commercial courts over the past three years (from almost 18,000 in 2018 to 31,000 in 2021) [6].

However, there are methods of protecting IP and the main of them are copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets.

It takes a lot of work to find the best way to protect IP and for some people it may be quite difficult. But mainly we need to provide protection for high-tech areas such as computer algorithms, and the choice of methods should be adequate to a particular situation. For example, Citizen A. writes and sells new computer programs to Citizen B. In this case, Citizen A may need to protect copyrights and patent the code and algorithms, as well as register a trademark to market them.

Let's take a closer look at each of the above-mentioned protection methods. The first one is copyright which protects the creator's written and artistic works (paintings, novels, song lyrics, etc.) throughout his life and also for 70 years after his death.Copyright arises from the moment the author created the original work, but registration gives exclusive and extended rights to copyright owners. It can help protect one's rights from infringement in court and allows claiming damages.

The second method is a trademark which helps juridical person’s andindividual entrepreneurs to individualize goods. Trademarks protect verbal, pictorial, and volumetric designations that identify goods or services. A trademark registration may be valid for as long as it is used in business, and the registration is also renewed every 10 years. Thus, it is one of the most important means of IP protection for a business. It can be exemplified by the following situation.In April 2022, Yandex LLC applied to the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) for registration of the "ЯндексЛапки "(Yandex Paws) trademark.This trademark is mainly going to be used within the “Yandex. Advertising" project, although it is perfectly suited to the sale of pet products [4].

One more way of IP protection is the use of patents. Patents protect inventions of all kinds for 20 years. The key to patent protection is that the invention must be a new one. It can be illustrated by these design patents from Russian inventors, one of which is a pussycat image font [5].

Figure 1. Typeface

The fourth method is a trade secret representing a form of IP in which any company practice or process is not known outside the company. It usually exists to protect an economic advantage that could be lost if your trade secret becomes public or if your competitors steal it.Because they are not in the public domain and are not registered with any official institution, trade secrets provide no official protection. But if you can provide evidence that you have made efforts to keep and protect trade secrets, then your competitors in this case may be punished in court. The liability is a criminal one, since corporate espionage is a crime. One of the most famous trade secrets today is the recipe of Coca-Cola, which has been a secret for over 100 years.

Moreover, there aresuch ways to protect intellectual property rightsas state registration, documenting discoveries, using digital rights management, choosing strict nondisclosure agreements and creating secure credentials for access. It is possible that in the near future, blockchain technology, which is actively used abroad to protect IP in the field of music rights, will soon become widespread in the Russian Federation.

Summarizing the above-mentioned, we should stress the importance of IP protection. The ways to protect it are just as important, because without those many companies would lose profits, piracy would increase, data would not be safe, and there would be no new products and services because it would be not profitable for creators to invent anything. But it's a good thing that legislation, despite the gaps, is dealing with these issues at the present time and continues to improve. Thanks to it, there are such wonderful ways to protect IP as copyrights, patents, trade secrets and trademarks and there is hope that soon people will have new ways to protect intellectual property.

References:

1. Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Part Four: Federal Law dated December 18, 2006 № 230-FZ (with amendments and additions).
2. Gehayev M.D. Modern problems in the protection of intellectual property rights. Innovative science. - 2019. - №1. - С. 100-103;
3. On intellectual property // Vipo URL: https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/ru/ (date of reference: 30.04.2022);
4. Trademark "Yandex.Paws" is registered by Yandex // PATENTUS URL: https://patentus.ru/blog/2022/04/tovarnyy-znak-yandeks-lapki-zaregistrirovan-yandeksom/ (date of reference: 30.04.2022);
5. Information about patent for industrial design // URL: https://new.fips.ru/registers-doc-view/fips_servlet?DB=RUDE&DocNumber=96211&TypeFile=html(date of reference: 29.04.2022)
6. Participants of ATR forum discussed disputes on "intellectual" // PravoRU URL: https://pravo.ru/news/235275/ (date of reference: 01.01.2022).