Copyright Immunity: Past, Present, Future

The article analyses two cases considered by the Governing Senate in 1913 with the participation of the famous novelist and playwright I.N. Potapenko, who fell into bankruptcy: 1) the case on contestation by the bankruptcy administration of the insolvent I.N. Potapenko of the contract between I.N. Potapenko and L. Marks and 2) on the recognition of V.V. Stepanov as the right holder of the plays “The Grifter” and “The Old Master”. The author reconstructs the contemporary discourse on the issue of copyright immunity, demonstrating the ambiguity of the adopted legislative decision. Based on the motives of the cases considered by the Senate, taking into account the positions of pre-revolutionary jurists and trends in the development of modern domestic copyright law, the author reflects on the need to preserve absolute copyright immunity and the possibility of its revision in modern Russian law.