Computer Program Source Code as an Object of Legal Protection

With the development of information technology, professional communities (such as, for example, GitHub), as well as the widespread distribution of software in the modern world, the question of the legal status of the source code of a computer program is quite relevant and significant. Thus, the source code of the program is the basis for creating a software product and affects its functionality. Accordingly, it seems important to consider the issue of the legal regulation of this intellectual property object, its legal nature. In this final qualifying work, the problems of legal regulation of the source code of a computer program are considered, as well as a comparative legal analysis is carried out in order to identify existing features of legal regulation in other countries and identify existing trends in the development of such regulation. Special attention was also paid to the specifics of the legal protection of open source code.