Neighboring rights in international law and national legal systems

Introduction: audio recording, radio and other inventions made it possible to exploit creative works in new ways. Consequently, there arose new issues concerning protection of property interests of performers, phonogram producers, TV and radio broadcasting organizations. All the disputes over this problem had one common theme - the theme of copyright. This very connection with copyright law gave the name for the emerging institute - neighboring or related rights. Purpose: to determine the range of neighboring rights in international law, legal systems of foreign countries and Russia, to systematize national approaches to regulation of neighboring rights. Methods: methods of formal logic, historical, comparative law, system-structural and formal dogmatic methods are used in the analysis. Results: despite international standards for the regulation of neighboring rights, legal protection of these rights in foreign countries is characterized by a significant diversity. The first group of national legal systems includes those countries which do not protect related rights. In countries of the second group, neighboring rights are not recognized as such, while the relevant interests are protected by copyright law and legal institutes which are external towards it. The third group mainly includes countries with Anglo-American law, where some objects come under copyright law, while others are covered by rights which are recognized within copyright law but at the same time institutionally separated from copyrights. The fourth group comprises the states with the Civil law system. Here all the classical neighboring rights are institutionally separated from copyrights. Conclusions: Russia has established protection of neighboring rights under the influence of international and European law, and not national legal traditions. This refers to the rights specified in Chapter 71 of the Civil Code. However, Russian law directly or indirectly also recognizes other rights which are neighboring rights by their nature.