Exhaustion of the Exclusive Right to Objects of Intellectual Property in the Russian Federation

This paper explores the principle of exhaustion as a universal way of limitation exclusive rights in the legislation of the Russian Federation. The paper defines the legal nature of the principle of exhaustion, describes the main conditions for its application, considers the features of national, regional, international, and mixed modes of exhaustion. The issue of the possibility of applying the exhaustion principle to intellectual property objects expressed in digital form is examined in detail, the existing approaches to this issue in other jurisdictions are described, the probable legal and economic consequences for copyright holders, users, as well as other persons in the case of the extension of the exhaustion principle to digital copies. The problem of the overlapping of exhaustion regimes in one medium is analyzed, which is an integral part of the more general problem of the overlapping of exclusive rights. It was revealed that the overlapping of exhaustion regimes can be complicated by the plurality of copyright holders, which causes problems in the cross-border distribution of goods. The author offers a number of provisions aimed at simplifying the cross-border circulation of goods and reducing the risks of distribution activities.