The Russian legal system is a civil legal system. That means that unlike common law legal systems (United States) there is no judge made law. The Russian Federation makes all the laws and they are administered by different federal agencies. The Russian law that deals with Intellectual Property is the Civil Code of the Russian Federation Part IV section VII. The agency that handles Intellectual Property in Russia is the Rospatent. Part IV section VII covers sixteen kinds of Intellectual Property:
- Works of science, literature, and art;
- Computer Programs;
- Databases;
- Performances
- Phonograms;
- Broadcasting or diffusion of radio or television transmissions via cable;
- Inventions;
- Utility Models;
- Industrial Designs;
- Selection attainments;
- Topographies of integrated circuits;
- Secrets of production (trade secrets);
- Trade names;
- Trademarks and Service marks;
- Appellations of origin;
- Commercial names.
These categories are the unofficial translation of the Russian form of Part IV section VII. So some of the words have no American equivalent because we don't protect the category, and some have no English equivalent because the word just doesn't translate. For example, trade names, appellations of origin, and commercial names all fall under Trademark Law in America; Whereas Selection attainments cover what we might call plant patents in America, but the selection attainments' scope is much broader, so this is a term whose meaning was lost in translation.
I think it's interesting to note the difference from the American system where we protect source of origin markers (trademarks); new, useful, and non-obvious machines, processes, and articles of manufacture (patents); original works of authorship (copyrights); and secrets that are valuable because of their secrecy (trade secrets). The Russian system has more distinctions, but it's hard to tell what those distinctions mean without a look into the applications of those distinctions. I will do this in my next post about Secrets of production in the Russian Federation.
