LEGAL ANALYSIS OF CIVIL LAW PROTECTION OF COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS IN THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND, SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES, DISADVANTAGES, ADVANTAGES, IN COMPARISON WITH THE LEGISLATION OF UKRAINE
Authors:   Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University, Skibickij Roman 
Published: January 2023

The formation of protection of copyright and related rights and legally protected interests is associated with a number of issues, both theoretical and methodological. One of the main problems of protection of copyright and related rights in Ukraine is the need to update the legislation in accordance with the development and trends of the modern world. Despite the large number of works devoted to the protection of copyright and related rights, it should be noted that in the legal literature, the legislation of Ukraine needs to be harmonized and actualized, updated in accordance with the realities of the modern world. The purpose of the article is to review and analyze the legislation of Ukraine, disadvantages, advantages and significant differences from the legislation in this field of the Republic of Poland, which are formed according to certain criteria in the doctrine of civil law, directions and approaches to the definition of the concept of legally protected interests and civil rights protection, description of their heterogeneous and homogeneous character to develop an integral view on the ways of understand this concept and their classification, as well as to set out the own vision concerning the optimal methodological basis for defining the concept of protection of civil rights and legally protected interests. Analysis of recent research and publications. The problem outlined by us was in the focus of attention of both Polish and some Ukrainian scientists, in particular: S. Golaba, P. Dabrouski, G. Dovhan, F. Zola and others. Previously unresolved issues. Despite the widespread cases of copyright and related rights violation in the information society, the latest legal instruments of foreign countries in this area have not been properly researched. Taking into consideration that the current system in Ukraine is not flexible enough and does not provide an adequate level of copyright and related rights protection, the implementation of the latest legal approaches is vital. The Civil Code of Ukraine (hereinafter - the CC of Ukraine) in the book 4 “Intellectual Property Law” (Articles 418 - 470) regulates relations arising in the field of creation of cultural and scientific values and use of such intellectual property. In particular, copyright and related rights are regulated by the following chapters 35-37 of the Civil Code of Ukraine. According to scholars, one of the advantages of this document is the placement of the above-mentioned book of the Civil Code of Ukraine immediately after the third, which determines the legal side of the rights of property and other related rights. Thus, “the legislator equated the right of intellectual property to the right of ownership of things.” This further strengthens the material role of information, as well as a kind of intellectual product that contains it, in the existence of a digital society. In contrast to the analyzed Ukrainian law in the field of copyright and related rights, in which, we recall, all relations in the field of copyright and related rights are regulated by 53 articles, the Law of the Republic of Poland “About Copyright and Related Rights” from 01.04.2004 consists of 15 sections. However, despite such a detailed layout in comparison with the Ukrainian legislation in this field, which contains only six general sections, it is difficult to say that Polish law is easy to use. For example, there is no separate article that would define all the terms (analog is the Article 1 of Ukrainian law), and therefore, these definitions have to be searched for within the law, such as “published work” and “distributed work” - in Art. 5, “introduction to circulation” - in Art. 51, “co-authors of an audiovisual work” - in Art. 69 and so on. But even this list is too small in comparison with the definitions given in the Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights” from 23.12.1993, so when resolving some controversial issues or, if necessary, clarifying how to comply with certain clauses of Polish law and what exactly falls under these clauses, every time it should be taken into consideration other regulations of the Republic of Poland. The own position on the problems of legal regulation of copyright and related rights is formed, as well the ways for further development of civil and law relations about copyright protection in Ukraine are determined. The Law of the Republic of Poland “About Copyright and Related Rights” presupposes that, in addition to the exclusive right to use the publication as a whole, the producer or publisher has the right to a title. Such clauses of Polish law seem useful for improving the legislation of Ukraine and the development of copyright law theory. Disadvantages in the legal regulation of official works were also revealed.