Legal Regulation of Television Programme Format as a Media Product

The purpose of the article is to analyse the making and development of legal regulation for television format as a unique media product, as well as the means of its copyright protection. The article uses general scientific and special research methods as the method of theoretical generalisation, the method of analogies and the method of comparative analysis. Referring to the comparative and historical-typological methods, this article is an analysis of the means of legal safeguard, within the framework of intellectual property rights, of television programme format with the corresponding features and functions. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that we have analysed the definitions of the television format concept and studied the state of legal regulation in the world and Ukraine. Conclusions. Thus, in modern foreign and domestic scientific use, there are several definitions for the format of a television programme. Still, this term does not have legislation framework, which negatively affects the legal regulation. However, the legal ambiguity of the definition of “format” gives rise to numerous debates, which can be divided into several categories: the first one sorts out TV format as an idea or a concept, which, according to the legislation of many countries of the world, is not subject to legal protection; to the second one – in the form of a list of specific rules, which are divided into invariable elements of the programme; to the third one – the affinity of the television programme format and literary works; to the fourth one – the conclusions of the Format Recognition and Protection Association (FRAPA), which provided 20 practical pieces of advice how to protect the format. It should be noted that the legal issues of the TV format are assigned to the norms of national legislation, and this is not in every instance effective. At the same time, the modern national legislation provides legal protection for works that are expressed in a physical form and are original and does not extends to any ideas, theories, principles, methods, procedures, processes, systems, methods, concepts, discoveries, even if they are expressed, described, explained, illustrated in work. However, the television programme format cannot be represented only as a copyright object. In our opinion, based on international judicial practice, it is quite logical to provide the television programme with copyright protection and to sign a non-disclosure agreement on any information related to the work on the TV format. This step is an efficient mean and field-proven