Plagiarism, Borrowing and Legitimate Use: The Concept Demarcation Problem

The article notes that in the legislation of the Russian Federation the term “plagiarism” is used only in relation to the deliberate appropriation of authorship, which entails criminal liability, while in scientific publications this term is used in relation to a wider range of borrowings that are not criminal offenses. The authors conclude that the negative consequence of such a blurring of legal terminology is the complication of classification of those legal phenomena that are encountered in practice. It is argued that for the further development of legislation, judicial and business practice it is necessary to provide a unified understanding of such legal phenomena as plagiarism, on the one hand, and other cases of illegal borrowing, on the other hand, with the division of the latter into separate types of borrowing, taking into account the peculiarities of certain areas of activity, including the establishment of different criteria for recognizing the fact of illegal borrowing for scientific activity, for film production, fiction and other areas of use of the results of creative activity and certain types of works.