Legal Regime of Orphan Works

An orphan work is a publicised work which has not passed into the public domain because of the presumed validity of the term of protection, information about the author or other right holder of which cannot be identified, as well as it is impossible to determine its location and (or) information for sending a legally significant notice, despite a preliminary search for which certain reasonable efforts have been expended. The problem with the circulation of orphan works is the impossibility of their lawful use due to the existence of presumptive copyright protection but the unknown creator or other holder of the exclusive right to it from whom consent to such use could be obtained. The goal of the research is to comprehensively study and analyse the legal regime of orphan works and the procedure for their use in Russia and abroad. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were accomplished: (1) the definition of an orphan work was proposed and its qualifying features were specified; (2) the peculiarities of the turnover of orphan works were studied and problems of their regulation were identified; (3) the legal mechanisms for regulating orphan works in the legislations of the European Union, Great Britain and the United States of America were analyzed; (4) methods and legal mechanisms for solving the problem of turnover of orphan works; (5) the possibilities of using modern technologies and digital tools to reduce the number of orphan works in the future have been identified; (6) the proposed draft laws in connection with the use of orphan works in the Russian Federation have been reviewed and analyzed; (7) author’s proposals have been developed to improve draft the Bill № 411043-8 "On Amendments to Part Four of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (regarding the establishment of the procedure for the use of Certain objects of copyright and Related Rights, the holders of which are unknown)", currently being considered in the State Duma of the Russian Federation.