Personal Non-Property Rights of the Author to the Official Work in the Copyright Law of Ukraine

This scientific article is devoted to the consideration of peculiarities arising in connection with the personal non-property rights of the author to the official work according to the current legislation of our country. Why is it important to clarify this issue and devote time to it? Because it is important to understand whether there is a fair balance between the interests of the employee or employees whose creative work creates the official work (in cases of co-authorship) and the interests of the employer for whom the relevant employees work. After all, although personal non-property rights of the author, according to the current legislation, do not depend on property rights, however, it is personal non-property rights that are the basis on which property rights are built. Thus, without the emergence of authorship, the person who created the work with his creative work does not have all other rights, including property rights. From the analysis of the current provisions of the legislation in this area, in our opinion, it is possible to talk about the existence of certain contradictions. Among such contradictions, the contradiction of Clause 4, Part 1 of Art. 11 of the Law of Ukraine “On Copyright and Related Rights” dated December 1, 2022 (hereinafter referred to as the Law) from Part 1 of Art. 429 of the Civil Code of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Code), paragraph 1 of part 1 of Article 11 of the Law from Part 1 of Art. 429 of the Code, Part 1 of Art. 14 of the Law from Part 1 of Art. 429 of the Code, Part 4 of Art. 11 of the Law with Part 3 of Article 14 of the Law. After considering and analyzing the relevant contradictions, two new versions of the articles were proposed, namely Art. 429 of the Civil Code of Ukraine by excluding the possibility of attaching personal non-property rights to the employer as both a legal entity and an individual for whom the employee works. The second edition concerns the introduction of changes to Part 3 of Art. 14 of the Law on the subject of the fact that the powers granted by the legislator to the employer should not mean the transfer to him of the corresponding personal non-property rights, and also that the corresponding powers should be exercised in compliance with Part 4 of Art. 11 of the Law. The proposed editions of the articles were formed as a result of consideration of such issues as the originality of the work, preservation of the originality of the work in case of co-authorship, when the employer entrusts another employee with the responsibility of completing an unfinished work, making changes to a completed work, accompanying such a work with illustrations, comments, prefaces, afterwords, etc., as well as consideration of such issues as presumption of authorship, copyright registration, protection of the title of the work, the original character of the work.