Streltsov L. State Obligations on Computer Program Protection in International Law

The author begins with establishing and describing in detail five historical periods, demonstrating the complexity of the process of coming to international agreement in regards to a new object of protection, especially one connected to information technology. It is worth noting that before copyright became the dominant form of international protection of computer programs, proposals for patent law or even sui generis protection had been made. The author moves on to carry out an assessment of the contemporary international law understanding of the features of a computer program as a protectable object and combines these features in order to produce the respective definition. Moreover, the legal characteristic of technological products, similar to a computer program is presented. Particular attention is paid to the accordance of legal definitions to the technical nature of these protected objects, the capability of such definitions to face future technical advances.