Features of Legal Regulation of Videogames

Despite the intensive growth and technological development of the gaming industry, many aspects related to the legal regulation of video games remain problematic, especially the legal regime of video games as intellectual property. The aim of the research is to determine the most suitable legal regime for protection of video games as intellectual property and aspects of legal protection of their elements. In accordance with the purpose of the research, the following objectives have been set: - to analyze Russian and foreign approaches to the legal qualification of a video game as intellectual property; - to seize the existing and possible classifications of individual elements of video games that constitute the essence of video games; - to describe the aspects of legal protection of individual elements of video games. The research methods are general scientific methods (synthesis, deduction, generalization, analogy, et. al), and formal-legal, comparative, empirical methods. Based on the analysis of international, foreign, and Russian legislation, special literature and judicial practice, the research paper depicts various points of view upon the essence of legal nature of video games and its elements, the content of rights to them and remedies. Upon the results of the research, the author concludes that the most suitable legal regime for video games per se cannot be singled out. A video game under Russian law can be protected as a computer program, as a database, and as a multimedia product. The legal regime of protection of each individual video game should be determined subject to the specifics of its development. The interpretation of the term “multimedia product” proposed in the Russian doctrine should not be limited only to its qualification as a copyright work. Video games can include various intellectual property. Russian law has not yet developed methods for determining the extent to which software-generated audiovisual displays are protected, which, if a video game is subject to protection as a computer program, should be protected as its non-literal elements. Moreover, in Russian law there is no approach to the qualification of the graphical user interface of the program if a video game is qualified as a multimedia product since the legal regime of audiovisual works upon the conducted analysis does not suit the graphical user interface of video games.