Legal Regime of an Open License in the Russian Federation

The study of the legal regime of open licences in the Russian Federation, taking into account the current law enforcement practice, is the purpose of the research. At the same time, the study of open licences is carried out through the prism of free software distribution. The author sets a number of key objectives to be achieved as a result of the study to achieve the above goal, namely: 1. To consider the construction of a licence agreement and its normative regulation; 2. to study the history of the emergence of open licences and determine their legal nature; 2. their legal nature; 3. Conduct a comparative analysis of the main types of open licences and highlight their key features; 4. Identify the main problems and topical issues of using software distributed under open licences, and propose solutions. The methodological basis of the research is made up of various methods, among which we can highlight: Dialectical method of analysing objective reality. General scientific methods of research - analysis, synthesis, comparison, allow to thoroughly investigate the current approaches of legislative bodies and various law enforcers as practice to the legal regime of open licences in the Russian Federation. The special-legal methods of research include comparative-legal, formal-legal and historical-legal methods. In the course of the research the study of open licences was carried out, which was accompanied by the consideration of Russian and foreign normative legal regulation, as well as judicial practice. Special attention was paid to the problems and topical issues of using software distributed under open licence: ambiguity of derivative work in open licences, different interpretation of distribution in different jurisdictions, viral nature of open licences, gratuitousness of open licence. In order to solve the problems and answer the actual questions on the given topic, the study provides ways of solving them. The study concludes with a summary of the research and a detailed conclusion.