Ghostwriters as a Legal Phenomenon: Features and Perspectives of Legal Regulation of Their Activity

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of using the work of another person in the intellectual field, primarily in literary activity. The involvement of ghostwriters in writing literary works has created a legal phenomenon when the subject matter of contractual relations represents the inalienable non-property right, namely: the right of authorship the transfer of which is not possible in many jurisdictions, and in others, despite the absence of an explicit prohibition, there is no legal regulation of such alienation. However, the existence of ghostwriters cannot be assessed as a unique phenomenon of modernity. In our time, they have only gained new forms and a special place not only in the literary, but also in the scientific field. In this regard, the establishment of legal mechanisms for attracting and regulating ghostwriters is more effective than the establishment of a system of prohibitions.In the conditions of changing publishing businesses and increasing ways and forms of proof, questions about the authenticity of a person's authorship began to arise increasingly, especially in the field of scientific and scholarly literature, where the work of "new" researchers is often used. The issue of assignment of the right of authorship (copyright) — a fundamental property right — is treated differently in different legal systems. The continental system of law relies on impossibility of transferring copyright from one entity to another as part of a civil law transaction. Therefore, instances of attribution of authorship are assessed in the context of criminal or administrative law. It forms the legal essence of the division of rights of authorship into property and nonproperty ones: any commercial rights to intellectual property can be ceded except the authorship.