Intellectual property is theft!

July 15, 2006 10:11 AM

Legal status of creative works from the USSR.

Intellectual property and the public domain are relatively big issues among this crowd, and this got me wondering how creative works from the USSR (or other Warsaw Pact states) are handled today. This seems like a triple-whammy problem, because A) many of those works were (I'm guessing) the property of the state or the people (in the USA, this means "public domain"); B) the legal framework under which those works were created no longer exists; and C) what was one country is now many, each of which has a different legal framework.

posted by adamrice to law & government (5 comments total)

I hope somebody answers this question, in detail, because I'm ready to make publicly available a huge body of works from the Soviet Union.
posted by fake at 12:11 PM on July 15, 2006

I suspect that the status may differ greatly depending upon who is deciding. I think the US courts may have a different opinion than the Uzbekistani (sp?) government for example.

So much of the law is decided upon by who raises a fuss, in which court, how good each side was in making their case, and what mood the judge is in that day.

Interesting question. Is this a practical question for you or are you just curious? Hope you find your answer.
posted by tkolstee at 1:39 PM on July 15, 2006

I'm curious too, and looking forward to Faze's trove if he posts it.
posted by languagehat at 1:41 PM on July 15, 2006

D'oh! I mean fake's trove. Sorry!
posted by languagehat at 1:41 PM on July 15, 2006

Here is Copyright Office Circular 38a (pdf) which may be of some help. This can be a very complicated area of law dealing with the Universal Copyright Convention and the successor status of nations which were formerly part of the USSR. Even consulting an international copyright/licensing expert to determine the status of particular works may leave open questions, but it is recommended all the same.
posted by anathema at 3:11 PM on July 15, 2006