Personal Non-Property Rights of the Performer in Modern Conditions

Abstract

Individuality and personal qualities manifistation is characteristic not only for authors when they create works, but also for performers. Performing a work, a performer leaves an imprint of his understanding of this work. Such an individual contribution gives grounds for the recognition of performers’ personal non-property rights to their performance. The personal non-property rights of the performer not only indicate the connection between the performer and the result of intellectual activity (performance) created by him, but they also allow the performer to terminate the actions of third parties affecting the personal interests of the performer.The paper provides a comparative analysis of the provisions of Russian and foreign legislative acts in the field of intellectual property concerning the personal non-property rights of performers. It is pointed out that the approaches applied to the protection of personal non-property rights of performers in the states of the Romano-German and Anglo-American legal systems have some differences. Thus, in the USA, provisions on unfair competition, privacy, etc. are applied to protect the non-property rights of performers. In Russia, when creating the provisions of legislation concerning the personal non-property rights of the performer, the provisions on similar rights of the author are taken as a basis, but in comparison with the authors, the rights of performers are more limited in scope. The author examines some problematic aspects indicating the expediency of studying the possibility of expanding the scope of the rights granted to the performer. In addition, it seems that the performer could have personal non-property rights that are not related to intellectual rights, for example, the right to an individual appearance and the right to vote.