Extending The Scope Of Antitrust Legislation Over The Area Of Exclusive Ip-Rights Exercise: Evidence From Russia

This paper deals with the issues of competition law and IP law interaction. Current Russian legislation provides absolute immunity from extending the antitrust prohibitions over the exercise of exclusive IP-rights. The idea of the article is that this approach needs to be revised. Russian court practice, legal doctrine and economic theory necessitate more flexible antitrust regulation in the area of IP. The analysis of US, EU, and Japanese models of legal regulation has revealed different approaches to the issues of antitrust policy in this field of social relations. Therefore, this paper suggests a different concept of regulation¬ – keep the general immunity from the application of antitrust prohibitions to rightholders, but make it conditional. At the same time, in order to ensure the optimal balance between private and public interests and to maintain the incentives for innovative activity, antitrust legislation should provide a system of guarantees for rightholders