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  • Legal Regulation of Free Software Licenses: Comparative Analysis of Legal Protection According to Russian Law and Law of Foreign Countries (USA, Germany and France)

Legal Regulation of Free Software Licenses: Comparative Analysis of Legal Protection According to Russian Law and Law of Foreign Countries (USA, Germany and France)

Student: Gorbacheva Elena

Supervisor:

Faculty: Faculty of Law

Educational Programme: Jurisprudence (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2017

Free/open-source software (FOSS) licenses play a significant role in the process of the modern software development and distribution. However, the emergence of their legal protection in different countries is still in process which causes certain problems of their legal application. Therefore, the main aim of the research is to conduct a comparative analysis of the legal protection of the FOSS licenses according to the Russian legislation and the legislation of the foreign countries (USA, Germany and France). The following objectives are to achieve: 1) the study and description of the history of the FOSS licenses and their concept; 2) the analysis of the legal protection of the FOSS licenses in the USA, Germany and France; 3) the analysis of the legal protection of the FOSS licenses according to the Russian legislation, determination of the possible problems in the application of the new rules of law and determination of the possible ways of resolving these problems considering the foreign experience. In the USA, Germany and France the predominant role in the formation of the FOSS licenses regulation is played by the judicial practice. In contrast, Russia is the first country to adopt a special rule of law considering open licenses which seems to be a wider notion in comparison with the free license. The comparative analysis shows that there is a possibility to regulate the FOSS licenses within the existing legal framework in Russia taking into consideration the experience of the foreign countries.

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