Ruslan Budnik – Leading Researcher, The UNESCO Chair on Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Rights, National Research University Higher School of Economics.  
Address: 20, Myasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.
E-mail: rusbudnik@gmail.com

A huge volume of circularization of information objects and operations related to them, as well as their diversity raise the question of the legal status of intellectual property. From an analytical point of view, the current legal regulation of information resources does not fully meet the situation. In this regard, the paper is aimed at analyzing modes of intellectual property protection in the field of information technology and at forming the legal concept for those resources which are free-to-access, or, otherwise, for those recourses access to which is stimulated, being a factor of their commercialization. The paper concludes that the existing institutions of legal protection fail to fully protect information objects that are public domain. Therefore, the paper introduces the concept of such legal institution as "permission."

This paper discerns three groups (classes) of information objects - open, closed (covered by legal restrictions) and combined. The first group includes all kinds of free and open resources, secondary value of which depends on their available and in demand. The second group includes all closed or limited resources, for instance patents for inventions and all kinds of intellectual property protection. The third group refers to software and databases, their status varying depending on the situation. The first group follows Creative Commons open licenses.  However, this practice is not flexible enough and hinders the development of innovative business schemes.

The goal of this paper is to prove that the major method of legal regulation for the first group of information objects should be the proposed method of unhindered permission and free use on the will of the copyright holder. A more adequate legal regulation will ensure the growth of economic activity on the basis of this type of objects, and increase their profitability and popularity. The incorporation of the method of legal permission is a major priority for modernization of intellectual property rights. The necessity of applying the method of permission is proved by referring to the analysis of information objects on the economic basis – potential profitability, which in turn depends on the extent of incidence of these data objects.