Журнал ЗАКОН

Case Comment to the Judgment of the Chamber for Civil Disputes of the SC RF No. 43-КГ21-7-К6, 22 March 2022 It is an orthodoxy in Russian civil law theory that certain assets closely connected with a person are nonproprietary by nature and could not be alienated. They are called ‘personal non-material assets.’ At the same time, contracts authorising the use of a person’s name, pseudonym, portrait or image are becoming more common. To what group do these contracts belong and to what extent are the obligations arising from them connected to the person? It is suggested that on the basis of the personal non-material assets belonging to a individual, she can create a right to use the name, which enables a registration of a trademark incorporating the name of the individual known in Russia or in the world at the day of the registration. This right exists within the framework of an organisational legal relationship — a special type of legal relationship constructed by Russian theory of civil law. The obligation under a contract to use the name shall not terminate upon the death of the person whose name is used as an element of the trademark. The contract may include conditions on the limits of the use of the name, including allowing the holder of the name or his heirs to withdraw their consent.

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Keywords: right to name, organisational legal relationship, law of obligations, personal non-material assets

The article explores the limits of the principle of relativity of obligations in joint and several (solidary) obligations. By analysing the procedure and conditions for the exercise of two secondary rights in solidary obligations — the right to dispute a transaction and the right to withdraw from the contract — the author concludes that exceptions to the principle of relativity are not limited to the well-known unity of the extinguishing effect. However, the decision to exercise the secondary rights (including the right to contest a transaction and to withdraw from the contract) cannot be determined solely by the concept of plurality of solidarity obligations, which has received strong support in the literature. The manner and conditions of exercising the secondary rights, and consequently the exceptions to the principle of relativity of obligations, depend on the reason for coordinating the obligations as solidarity, the nature of the secondary right and other factors. Furthermore, exceptions to the principle of relativity of obligations are often not to be considered under the concept of plurality of solidarity obligations, but under the concept of plurality of persons involved in the contract. Therefore, not only the regulation of the plurality of persons in obligations, but also the plurality of persons in contracts should be elaborated further.

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Keywords: law of obligations, joint and several obligations, secundary rights, voidability of transactions, repudiation of contract

The article explores the question of whether it is legitimate to conceal significant circumstances for a party who negotiates a contract. The principle of good faith, as it is presented today, does not help us determine with certainty when concealment is in good faith and when it is not. Therefore, the author proposes filling this principle with specific factors that form a fluid system of normative criteria.

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Keywords: law of obligations, information duties, information asymmetry

The second part of the article discusses the problem of the use of secured assignment of claims outside the factoring agreement. The rules on public disclosure of security assignment are analysed in detail. It is treated as a title method of securing obligations, which predetermines the rules which apply to it. Apart from special rules of Chapter 43 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, secured assignment is subject to the principle of accessory and other general provisions on securing the performance of obligations (art. 329 of the Civil Code) and the legal positions of the Supreme Court developed for other forms of title financing, including buy-out leasing agreements. In addition, the paper compares these norms and legal positions with the rules on pledge. As the result, the author concludes that the proposal to extend pledge rules to security assignment, as described in the literature, is ill-advised.

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Keywords: security assignment, pledge of claim, factoring, notification, accessory

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a technology capable of learning and autonomous decision-making has raised the question of the need to transform the traditional concept of tort liability and civil liability in general. The unpredictability of the actions of AI systems makes the traditional institutions of extra-contractual liability, such as damage caused by a source of increased danger or due to product defects, inapplicable. At present, there is no special institution or tort composition at the international and national level that takes into account the specifics of artificial intelligence and the balance of interests of the participants in AI relationships. Researchers, proposing their own approaches to the problem in question, tend to simplify the situation, which results in unreasonable imposition of the liability burden on a certain group of persons. The author attempts a comprehensive analysis of the concepts of tort liability for damage caused by intellectual systems presented in the literature and legislation. As a result, he proposes a universal concept that takes into account the peculiarities of artificial intelligence and a set of socio-economic and ethical factors, which is based on a combination of fault and risk management principles. Great importance is attached to the risk management mechanism, which is applied in cases where fault cannot be established. The risk of harm is accepted by the individual on the basis of voluntary informed consent, an important but not the only element of the principle of transparency, which in general should be seen as a central normative provision in the regulation of the AI industry. The author hopes that this study will improve the regulation of the AI industry and also help to address the legal challenges associated with the development and use of artificial intelligence.

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Keywords: law of obligations, tort law, artificial intelligence

The article analyses the possible ways of determining the commencement of the limitation period in the case of contestation from the de lege lata and de lege ferenda point of view. The author considers three possible concepts for calculating the limitation period: the concept of objective limitation, the concept of single limitation and the concept of multiple limitation. The author concludes that, from the point of view of the current regulation, the concept of multiple limitation applies. In turn, from the point of view of the preferred regulation, the most successful solution is to apply the private version of this concept, in which the limitation is calculated for the bona fide trustee and the average creditor.

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Keywords: creditor challenge, subjective limitation, objective limitation, representation