Theory and practice of intellectual property
№ 4 / 2021
ISSN (Print) 2308-0361
ISSN (Online) 2519-2744
PDF (Ukrainian)DOI: https://doi.org/10.33731/42021.243113
Published 2021-10-25
Legislation in the field of copyright: evaluation of effectiveness
Anna Shtefan
Ukraine
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2382-4849
Abstract
The effectiveness of legislation is its ability to cause for the participants of social relations the expected consequences due to the purpose of legal rules, including the ability to satisfy the interests of the participants of these relations. Effective legislation is characterized by such features as quality, the ability to act, stability, dynamism, sufficiency. These properties reflect the level of reproduction in legal acts of the needs and trends of development of society, technical characteristics of legislation, its ability to comprehensively and optimally determine all the necessary means of protection and regulation of relations without excessive and unjustified interference in the behavior of the subjects of these relations.
The Ukrainian copyright system comprises two basic laws: the Civil Code of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine ‘On Copyright and Related Rights’. In addition, there are a number of laws that regulate certain areas of creation and use of works. This applies in particular to architecture, theaters, publishers, media. However, the existence of an extensive system of regulations is not a guarantee of the effectiveness of legislation in the field of copyright which has a number of shortcomings, in particular:
– the lack of unification of terminology when in different laws different terms are used for the same phenomenon. For example, the subject of copyright in some cases is called ‘right holder’ or ‘person owning the copyright’;
– the presence of collisions when the same aspect of relations is regulated differently in different acts. For example, in Art. 29(2) of the Law on copyright the group of persons who can protect the inviolability of work after the author’s death is limited by the heirs while Art. 439(2) of the Civil Code includes not only heirs but also a person authorized by the author to carry out such protection and other interested persons. In Ukraine, there is no clear clarification of which rule is to be applied in case of collisions that causes problems in practice;
– the presence of outdated provisions that do not correspond to the modern development of science, technology, and society, and therefore cannot be effectively applied;
– the presence of provisions that cannot be implemented due to the lack of appropriate legal mechanisms. These are cases in which the law declares a certain rule or standard which must act in the manner prescribed by law but this legal regime does not exist. This applies, for example, to the extension of the sui-generis right to non-original databases mentioned in Art. 10(1)(e) of the Law on copyright while the legislation contains no provision for this right;
– gaps in the legal regulation associated with the essential needs that have been objectively formed in society. Copyright legislation does not contain rules for the use of orphan works, some important exceptions and limitations that exist in many other countries. Due to these and other gaps, legislation incompletely and non-exhaustively regulates relations in the sphere of creation and use of works.
This negatively affects the effectiveness of legislation and can significantly complicate law enforcement. Therefore, the improvement of copyright law is one of the most important tasks of today.
Keywords: effectiveness of legislation, criteria for assessing the effectiveness of legislation, copyright, intellectual property
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