Experience of legal regulation of copyright in the European Union: search for ways to harmonize the legislation of Ukraine.

Abstract

This article reveals the peculiarity of the legal regulation of copyright as a component of intellectual property in the legal system of the European Union, primarily through the prism of the study of the stages of its formation and development.
 Within the framework of this article, the stages of formation and development of the copyright institution from the time of the founding of the European Economic Community to the present time were investigated. Important attention is paid to the study of copyright regulation in the provisions of the founding treaties of the European Union, in particular in the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, the Treaty on the European Union (Maastricht Treaty), the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Treaty of Nice, the Treaty of Lisbon and the sources of "secondary law" of the European Union, in particular, directives, regulations, decisions of the European Parliament and the Council on the harmonization of intellectual property rights of the member states of the European Union.
 The position is argued, according to which at the initial stages of the formation of the legal system of the European Union in terms of the legal regulation of copyright, an approach was used, according to which the legal acts did not establish direct requirements for its legal regulation and instead established provisions that would contribute to the formation of the functioning of the common market of the European Union. It is noted that parallel to the "primary sources" of the European Union, the sources of "secondary law" were formed. It was noted that a special place in the legal regulation of copyright in the European Union was played by the directives, which, being binding on the member states to which they were addressed, left the freedom of choice of the form and methods of their implementation to the national bodies of the latter.
 In order to achieve the goal, the author used the methods characteristic of legal science. The research was conducted primarily using the historical-legal, comparative-legal, formal-legal method and the dialectical method of learning legal reality.
 On the basis of the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the law of the European Union is characterized by a rather exhaustive list of sources, their hierarchy, as a result of which this law is well organized, systematized and internally agreed. It was established that the formation of European intellectual property rights took place on the one hand under the influence of international law, and on the other hand, the peculiarities of the legal regulation of copyright in the member states.