License agreements for the use of users’ intellectual property in the digital market

Abstract

Digital platforms widely implement standard license agreements, according to which users grant them certain rights. And being today at an understandable stage of the establishment of these processes, several urgent questions arise – to what extent the content of such contracts is regulated at the national and international levels, how the provisions of regulatory documents are reflected in license agreements between users and platforms, how the standards for these documents take into account the needs of stakeholders. The purpose of the presented study is to determine the content of standard provisions of non-exclusive licenses offered by digital platforms, for certain industries, taking into account the norms of national and international legal documents and taking into account the balancing of the needs of interested parties. To achieve the purpose of this research, the method of scientific and legal analysis of normative documents, literature, and license agreements presented on digital platforms, as well as scientific methods of comparison and generalization, were used. Licenses are compared according to the following criteria: name, type of license, intellectual property objects, granted rights (separately – the right to grant sublicenses), term of validity, territory of validity, availability of royalties, possibility of revocation, guarantees of purity of works from third-party rights. The content of such a license is defined, which takes into account the interests of all parties in accordance with the laws and the technical needs and capabilities of the platforms. There are still unsettled aspects of the above, including at the international level – these issues may become the subject for further research. Although the digital platforms analyzed in the article are characterized by different functional features, content, target audience, etc., the proposals can be implemented regardless of these differences, but with the addition of provisions relevant to the specifics of the platform.