Russian copyright law

The current Copyright law of the Russian Federation is codified in part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. It entered in force on January 1, 2008.

The first post-Soviet copyright law of the Russian Federation became effective on August 3, 1993. It completely replaced the older Soviet legislation that had been in effect until then. The new Copyright law of 1993 was based upon WIPO model laws and followed the continental European tradition: it clearly separated economic and moral rights, and it included detailed provisions for neighbouring rights.

The Copyright law of 1993 had specified a general duration of copyrights of 50 years beyond an author's death, or 50 years since the publication of an anonymous work. The implementation act for the law made the new law apply retroactively, restoring copyrights (and neighbouring rights) on works on which the shorter copyright terms from the Soviet-era had already expired or which had not been copyrighted at all under Soviet law. In 2004, this copyright term was extended to 70 years for all works still copyrighted.

In 2006, completely rewritten intellectual property laws were included in part IV of a new Civil Code of the Russian Federation. These new laws entered into force on January 1, 2008, replacing all previous intellectual property legislation, including the separate copyright law from 1993. The copyright term has been extended to 70 years for works published by Russian authors and copyright protection has been retroactively granted to works which had their 50-year protection term expire in 1993–2003, bringing many notable works out of public domain. For works that have been created or published in other countries, the law now implements the rule of the shorter term, matching Russian copyright term with those existing in the country of origin.

When the Soviet Union was dissolved and the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union became independent states, the copyright law of the USSR also split into fifteen independent copyright laws, each with its own jurisdiction defined by the territory of the new successor state of the Soviet Union. All these successor states initially took over the old Soviet legislation.

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