Genesis of legal protection of animated audiovisual works

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying of the history of legal protection of animated audiovisual works in the course of development of technologies for production of such works. The author establishes that the creation of ‘live’ images, which was carried out to conduct scientific experiments in physics and mathematics, eventually became the starting point for the development of animation and cinematography. The history of animation is divided into six main periods. These periods naturally do not coincide with the stages of development of legal protection of objects created by animation and cinematography. It is determined that the stages of animation development as a field of creative activity and a business area are distinguished by the criteria of technology and economic development. They are also associated with the development of cinematography due to the similarity of the production process. The conclusions reflect that it is difficult to divide the genesis of the legal protection of animated audiovisual works into stages due to the diversity of legal provisions in different jurisdictions. Using the example of the evolution of national legislation of certain countries of the world and the provisions of the Berne Convention, the article reveals theoretical approaches to the legal protection of animated audiovisual works. The article provides an overview of the following approaches: 1) protection of a cinematographic work (film) as a dramatic work if it is original and does not infringe the rights of the authors of dramatic works on which it was created; 2) protection of an animated work (film) as a photographic work, according to which protection is provided for a cinematographic work that does not have any features of originality; 3) protection of an animated work (film) as a moving image, which is inherent in US law; 4) protection of an animated work (film) as a cinematographic work, which provides for the protection of such a work as a separate object; 5) protection of an animated audiovisual work, which is a new approach to legal protection. It is concluded that the reason for the diversity of terminology such as cinematographic work, film, moving image, and audiovisual work in modern legislation is the result of the historical ambiguity of approaches to legal protection of this type of work.