SOURCE: Rules and Regulations in Russia - Russian Business Law Journal

Decompilation of Computer Programs

1. A person legitimately owning a copy of a computer program or a data base may, without obtaining permission from the author or other owner of exclusive rights, use said work without paying any additional royalties:

1) make changes to a computer program or a data base exclusively for adaptational purposes with the user's hardware, and perform any actions connected with the functioning of said computer program or data base according to its purposes, including recording and storage in computer memory (the memory of a single computer or a single net user), as well as correction of obvious mistakes, unless otherwise provided for by the agreement with the author;

2) make a copy of said computer program or data base provided that said copy is intended only for archive purposes or for the replacement of a legitimately acquired copy in cases where the original of the computer program or data base has been lost, destroyed and may not be used for other reasons. In this case, said copy of said computer program may not be used for purposes other than those indicated in Subpara. 1 of this Para. and shall be destroyed, if possession of said copy of said computer program or data base ceases to be legitimate.

2. A person legitimately owning a copy of a computer program may, without the consent of the author or other holder of exclusive rights and without payment of additional royalties, reproduce and convert the object code into the original text (decompile the computer program) or instruct other persons to perform such actions, if said decopilation is required to achieve interaction with a computer program independently developed, to interact with other programs, by said persons provided the following terms and conditions are observed:

1) the information required to achieve said interaction has not been previously accessible to these persons from other sources;

2) said actions are limited to the portions of the decompiled computer program to interact with other programs??;

3) information received as a result of decompilation may only be used to allow the independently developed computer program to interact with other programs and may not be transferred to other persons, other than cases in which this transferral of information is required to allow the independently developed computer program to interact with other programs, just as it may not be used to develop a computer program essentially similar in appearance to the decompiled computer program or to perform any other action violating copyright.

3. The application of the provisions of this article shall not cause unjustified harm to normal use of these computer programs or data bases and shall not unwarrantedly infringe upon the lawful interests of the author or any other holder of exclusive rights to these computer programs or data bases.