Guilt as a condition of civil liability for violation of copyright and related rights

Abstract

The relevance of the scientific article is due to the changes made to copyright legislation, which established a multiple size of civil liability for violation of copyright and related rights. Such responsibility is atypical for civil law, since it provides for the dependence of its size on the form of guilt of the offender. In the doctrine of civil law and jurisprudence, the presumption of guilt in committing a civil offense is traditionally applied. At the same time, the measures of responsibility are aimed at full compensation for the harm caused, regardless of the form of guilt. Therefore, in civil law there is no normative definition of the forms of guilt. At the same time, in cases on the protection of copyright and related rights, the issue of proving the form of the offender’s guilt acquires special significance. This is necessary to establish the basis for civil liability and its size. For this purpose, based on the study of scientific approaches to understanding the category of guilt, the author of the article formulated criteria for establishing a careless form of guilt in violation of copyright and related rights; the signs indicating the absence of guilt in the actions of the offender have been identified; the characterization of intent when committing a violation of these rights is given. The behavior of the violator, which is deliberately aimed at violating the rights of the copyright holder or deliberately ignoring his rights in order to achieve goals useful for himself, should be defined as guilt in the form of intent. The attitude of the subject to the harm caused to the copyright holder is legally unimportant. Intent should be established with respect to the behavior of the subject at the time of the violation, and not after its completion. The application of the criteria for the form of guilt proposed in the article is aimed at solving practical problems in law enforcement