Commodification of Intangible Assets in the Russian Federation: History, Current State, Development Prospects

The involvement of intangible assets (unification) in civil turnover contradicts the ideas of intangible assets that have developed in Russian civil law and reflected in civil legislation as objects that are inalienable from the subject, are not subject to monetary valuation, and therefore are not able to participate in civil turnover and are subject only to protection measures of a civil‑law nature. In the context of the contradiction that has arisen, it is necessary to determine which legal regime of intangible assets should be fixed in legislation: to recognize them as a marketable commodity, or to preserve the existing regime of the object of civil protection. To this end, the article provides a historical analysis of the economic, ideological, and axiological causes of the phenomenon of commodification, its potential impact on public relations in general, as well as on the positions of civil science regarding the relationship between subject and object in the structure of civil law relations. The article is written using the following methods: historical, sociological, formal logical, analysis and synthesis, interpretation of legislation. It is concluded that the commodification of intangible assets themselves is impossible due to their natural properties, carries a danger to the moral state of society, does not correspond to the value orientations of the modern Russian state, as well as the prevailing scientific ideas about the system of objects of civil law and the structure of civil law relations, which presupposes — there is no opposition between the subject and the object of a legal relationship. At the same time, the ability of some (not all) intangible assets to be reflected in tangible objects (audio and video recordings, digital copies of a person’s appearance on a hard disk, flash card, etc.), which, being property, have every reason to be in civil circulation. A new understanding of the phenomenon of the commodification of intangible assets is proposed as the introduction into civil circulation of material media reflecting intangible assets. It is proposed to develop the legal regime of these material carriers, taking into account the peculiarities of the intangible benefits reflected in them. The intangible benefits themselves must preserve the legal regime of objects of civil protection.