LEGAL ASPECTS OF CLASSIFICATION OF INTANGIBLE ASSETS IN MERGER AND ACQUISITION DEALS IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR

Abstract

The article is dedicated to legal aspects of classifying and describing intangible assets in merger and acquisition deals for telecom companies. The absence of proper legal coverage of the issue in Russia leads to considerable discounts on asset value in such deals, which is especially evident because Russia is the leader in their volume among Eastern European countries. An important part of these deals is classification of acquired tangible and intangible assets, intellectual property, including authors’ rights, patents, other components of business model innovations, and their further reclassification.

But today many aspects of digital product creation do not have a detailed and clear description in the Russian legislation, however, they should be clarified and included in the legal documentation for these deals so as to make the most of the deal closing. The starting point of the research in this article is the practical experience of developing professional standards for the creation of intangible assets in content production. Nowadays, the focus in developing professional standards is on the product created, not on the description of the processes involved.

When developing the professional standard for audiovisual translation, the product creation process was analyzed from the point of the activity, which helped to increase the legal protection of created products. The stages of audiovisual product creation and localization were identified and their legal aspects were described.

The legal description of stages of intangible asset production also resulted in defining frameworks for many new professions including game translators, dubbing editors and audiovisual translators.