Issues of Intellectual Property in Musical Works under Private International Law

INTRODUCTION: Resolution by the Court of Appeal of Paris in 1888 of a dispute over the legacy and further publication of certain musical works created by Frederic Chopin arises new reflections on application of rules of private international law (conflict-oflaw rules as well as material criteria used by courts to imply national law to foreign works). The analysis of the said decision, and mostly of the motivation proposed by judges to support the final resolution (widely contested by French legal researchers as non-accurate), allows nevertheless to turn once more to Intellectual Property basis (such as its ownership concept and duration of copyright rules) and to demonstrate the influence it makes on international private matters. An analysis of a peculiar surface of the court's motivation laid down for rendering the decision makes it possible to demonstrate a way of localization and the importance of occasional circumstances and subjective considerations applied to create an individually applied court rule.

MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study used awide range of works written by French, pre-revolutionary Russian, Soviet and modern Russian, English and American researchers of Intellectual Property Law and of International Private Law of the 19th through 21st centuries. An abbreviated text of the commented decision is included as well. It applied general scientific and special scientific methods (including historical-legal andformal-legal methods). RESEARCH RESULTS. The commentators join the negative opinion on the motivation choose by the Court of Appeal to support its final statement about the French copyright law rules as due to be applied in this case. Instead of autonomy of will (lex voluntatis), being obviously a non-accurate groundation, a criterion of first revelation (publication) as the most relevant.

DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS. Criterion of the place of publication of work (under the following international and national legislation - along with personal criterion relating to nationality of its author) is certain to be primarily taken into consideration in the scope of transnational copyright.

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