As case law has proven, a court judgement or an arbitration award, which resulted the losses of the party, serve as a basis for claiming these losses as damages from a breaching party. In these cases, we do not deal with the issues of recognition of foreign judgements or arbitration awards, but rather on recognition of the mere fact of the issuance of a decision against the party which was suffered the damages and wants that the breaching party compensates them. The legal ground for this recognition is the commonly known principle of res judicata. Compensation of losses becomes more  complicated in situation when a foreign element is involved in the relation.  Firstly, it may happen that the applicable foreign law does not allow adjudication of damages in these situations or make it conditional by various requirements. Secondly, recognition of amounts paid under foreign judgements or arbitration awards as losses depends on the degree of trust of the local courts to these foreign judgements and awards.
In case a claim on compensation of losses which claimant incurred under foreign judgements and arbitration awards is filed in the court, the court faces with the question as to the starting point of a limitation period. The Russian case law evidences that alimitation period for claiming damages starts from themoment of issuance of the relevant court judgement or arbitration award and their came into effect, but not from the moment of breaching by the  relevant party of its initial obligation, which was the basis for filing a claim in foreign court or arbitration institution. 

 The process of active application of the norms of non-state regulation, which began with cross-border trade in the Middle Ages (lex mercatoria), has now spread to almost all types of cross-border relations, although with varying degrees of penetration and recognition of the relevant norms. Non-legal matter, rapidly scalable in terms of network companies to sizes fragmented exceeding legal “veils”, leads to paradigm shifts in terms of law and law enforcement, and aggravating new type of conflict: the conflict of law and non-law of cross-border relations, especially in the context of cyberspace. The norm of non-state regulation in the paradigm of private international law is one of the modern concepts that integrate norms of behavior that are not derived from States and determine the direction of development of private international law, which requires its actual understanding in connection with the evolution of the order of creation, forms of objectification, and practice. The article examines various scientific views on the nature of the norms of non-state regulation and their place in the modern paradigm of private international law, as well as new  regulatory regimes that lie outside the traditional state-oriented models, analyzes their conflict with the law, and develops a methodology for their integration into regulatory mechanisms. 

 Institutions of the public domain and orphan works in cross-border copyright relationships have drawn particular doctrinal attention because they are mechanisms capable of transcending territoriality. The article sets the task of distinguishing between the action of these institutions based on the study of the history of the issue, the content of sources, legal regulation regimes. Conclusions are made about the differences according to the following criteria:
1) recognition by the world community — the institution of the public domain is universal, while the institution of orphan works is enshrined at the national (regional) level only in a few states;
2) cases of transition of works under the influence of institutions — into the public domain — expiration of the term of protection, legislative prescriptions of a sanctioning nature, voluntary refusal of the authors from exclusive rights; institution of orphan works — the unwillingness of the author to exercise  control or loss of information about the author;
3) on the basis of the definitions of the subjects of regulation: public domain —  works that are not protected by copyright; orphan works, by contrast, are believed to be protected by copyright;
4) connection with the harmonization process — the institution of the public domain is enshrined in the law of all states of the world participating in the system of international copyright protection, and its action can be considered  the result of harmonization, including the choice of lex loci protectionis to resolve cross-border disputes; there is no uniformity in the mechanism for accessing orphan works. At the same time, at the transboundary level, both institutions are united by the problem of the absence of legal regulation for the situation of returning a work under full copyright protection. 

 The article deals with the problem of protecting the rights of subjects of personal data in the context of the development of information technologies, as well as in the context of the legal protection of intellectual property. It is noted, that personal data can have completely different meanings both for subjects of personal data and for persons using them. The features of personal data processing within the framework of creating intellectual property are analyzed: computer programs, databases, industrial property rights (know-how, patents). Foreign and Russian judicial practice is considered. Attention is focused on the fact that it is advisable to correlate  efforts to unify legislation on personal data with the processes of unifying intellectual property rights in order to form an effective system for the protection of intellectual property, taking into account the protection of the  rights of subjects of personal data, which is especially important in the context of the rapid development of information technologies. 

 The article analyzes the problem of abuse of rights by investors when they initiate proceedings in investment arbitration. For an individual or legal entity of any state, it is an attractive opportunity to use the dispute resolution mechanism in international arbitration against their state. This can lead to abuse of investors, resulting in an “artificial arbitration competence”. 
It is shown that the abuse of rights by investors can be expressed by  manipulating of corporate nationality, treaty-shopping, and obtaining a  second passport. It is set up that the concept of “procedural abuse” is  derived from the principle of good faith, which is used to assess the legality of the initiation and filing of a claim by a foreign investor in an international investment tribunal. 
The author concludes that investment restructuring is an abuse of procedural rights if such manipulations are carried out to transfer existing disputes into the scope of bilateral investment protection treaties, that is, in order to create  “artificial jurisdiction” of investment arbitration.
If an individual investor has the nationality of two states — parties to a bilateral  investment treaty, he or she cannot act as a foreign investor for the host state, with which he has significant ties at the time of investment. The conclusion about the abuse of rights can be made by a comprehensive analysis of all the  circumstances of the case: the time of the establishment of the company, the implementation of investments, the violation by the state of obligations under the investment treaty. 

 The purpose of this article is to clarify the scope of the Regulation (eu) 2016/679 of the European parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) (here in after — Regulation). The author makes a comparative legal analysis of the provisions of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (here in after — the Directive) and Regulations. As a result of the study, the author distinguishes between the territorial and extraterritorial scope of the Regulation.
The author clarifies the content of the concepts of “equipment” and “the  establishment” of the controller and the person processing personal data in the context of the application of the Regulations. The article concludes that since no changes were made to the concept of “the establishment” when the Directive was repealed, a broad interpretation of this concept in judicial practice can also be applied to the territorial scope of the Regulation.
The continuity of the wording of the Directive and the Regulation allowed the author to conclude that the extraterritorial scope of the Regulation can be seen not only in Part 2 of Article 3 of the Regulation, which provides for its direct extraterritorial effect, but also in Part 1 of Article 3, which specifies the territorial scope of its action, on the basis of criteria that are based solely on the territory of the EU member States, such as the “place of establishment” of the controller or the person processing personal data. 

 Information technology has significantly changed the practice of international trade finance in the field of monetary transactions. The article examines the international rules for electronic presentation of documents in a letter-of-credit in the light of adoption of the eUCP v. 2. 0. The main characteristics of electronic  records submitted under a letter of credit are formulated, and the  method of their authentication is determined. The practice of transferring of electronic documents for payment is analyzed, and the specific features of their examination are considered. The importance of transition to electronic document management, which will speed up trading operations  and reduce  their cost, was noted. It is concluded that at the present stage of development, the transition to full electronic document management is difficult due to the involvement of a large number of participants who are reluctant to use electronic records to formalize their relationships in trade operations, in addition to banks. 

 The article summarizes the procedure for the formation of contractual  relations in the conditions of cross-border maritime transport of dangerous goods. The conclusion is made about the determining value of permissive, as well as notification norms, provisions on preventive measures. In this  regard, the mechanism of legal regulation is considered as a variety of complex social and legal institutions designed to overcome the gaps and contradictions of legal regulation. It is noted how important the principles of legality and justice, which are characteristic of each individual institution of law, become when concluding a contract. They are studied as a manifestation of various aspects of civil liability, mandatory prohibitions, as well as the resulting retribution. It is emphasized whether the participants in legal relations should then turn to the conflict-of-laws institution of autonomy of the will of the parties, or whether it is nothing more than an alternative to other attachment formulas, moderately flexible and absolutely predictable. The author highlights the legal properties of the connection between the ship and the flag that it carries, which are crucial for a number of transactions: on the disposal of movable and immovable property, the  provision of possessory protection. The author outlines the differences  between the public and private interests of economic entities when registering a ship, determines which legal decisions, legal facts named in the law, allow to strengthen the scope of the property and obligation statute in legal relations. 

 The article reveals the features of the institutions for securing contractual monetary obligations, such as seizure of the sea, maritime liens and mortgages, that have emerged in private international maritime law. The legal originality of these interim measures is explained by the specifics of the content of international maritime legal relations and the special role in them of such a property object as a sea vessel. The possibility of compulsory sale of a sea vessel stimulates the debtor in a monetary obligation to properly fulfill it and creates a real property guarantee for the creditor in the event of a debtor’s malfunction in a maritime contractual relationship. Due to the transboundary nature of international merchant shipping and the constant movement of seagoing vessels from one jurisdiction to another, national and international conventional regulation of interim measures in international maritime law provides for the possibility of forcible detention of seagoing vessels in ports and their forced sale. The applicable norms of the Merchant Shipping Code of the Russian Federation and the international conventions on sea seizures, maritime liens and mortgages ratified by the Russian Federation form the basis of the legal positions of Russian courts  and arbitration tribunals when considering issues of ensuring maritime claims of a crossborder nature. At the same time, the national  procedural norms of the state play an important role — the place of registration of the vessel, the place of the decision on the arrest of the vessel, the place of registration of security encumbrances, the place of compulsory implementation of the mortgage. 

 This article analyzes the regulation of relations to release from the fulfillment of cross — border obligations due to the onset of force majeure, namely the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19).
The issue of practical difficulties in obtaining certificates of force majeure circumstances in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia is discussed,  and problems of using certificates to prove these circumstances in 
judicial practice. At the international public level, an interesting decision was analyzed, which was rendered in France by the Colmar Court of Appeal.
In the field of private international law, the following international acts were analyzed: Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods 1980, Principles of International Commercial Contracts UNIDROIT, rev. 2016, New ICC Model Clauses 2020. This article reveals the need for the mandatory  use of a force majeure clause in a cross-border commercial contract.
This article analyzes a new 2020 documents «Note on the UNIDROIT Principles  of International Commercial Contracts and the COVID-19 health crisis», whichexplained the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance and non-performance of international commercial contracts. 

The article examines the issues of private law consequences of countering the global viral pandemic COVID-19 in the sphere of jurisdiction and termination of the international air transportation agreement. It is established that the jurisdictional mechanism of consideration of claims from contracts of international air transportation of passengers and baggage requires coordination of the procedure of the claim procedure and court pro-ceedings carried out carried out under the provisions on the protection of consumer rights. In international law and national regulation, the tendency of differentiation of approaches to various types of claims of passengers in case of violation of the obligations of carriers under contracts for interna-tional air carriage is highlighted. Attention is drawn to the difference in the legal regulation of international and domestic air transportation, the use of conflict-of-law mechanisms and norms of international law having priority over national legislation. The study compares the provisions of procedural and private international law, examines the provisions of judicial practice and analyzes international legal norms. It is concluded that in relation to emer-gency conditions like the COVID-19 virus pandemic, the current law needs to be improved. Attention is drawn to the need to strengthen the leading role of law in the context of the increasing technical and informational development of society and the globalization of information links and communications.

 On the 12th of December, 2019, at the symposium hosted by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Peace Palace in the Hague, professor  Bruno Simma and the Business and Human Rights Arbitration Working Group officially launched the Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration.
It is expected that arbitration based on this Rules will hold great promise as a method for resolving human rights disputes involving multinational  business enterprises (MNEs), in particular, in regions where national courts  are noneffective, corrupt, politically influenced or simply unqualified.
In this regard, the article attempts to analyze the main provisions of the Hague Rules and assess the appropriateness of its application for resolving  human rights disputes involving business. Based on the results of the analysis, the author concludes that the adoption of this document, first, will provide a remedy for those affected by the human rights impacts of  business activities, and second, can assist businesses to meet its responsibilities under the UN  Guiding Principles. 

 The article points out that the dominant role of the interests of public order in private international law in the 17th century was highlighted by Dutch collisionists. It has been established that the general rule based on the damage / consequences to interests conflicting in the legal relationship of public order (Ulrik Huber’s axiom) follows from the logic of legal regulation. It is concluded that the main feature of the method of resolving conflicts in private international law is a consequential approach — assessing the consequences for  the interests of public order affected by the cross-border legal relationship. In this regard, it is noted that positive and negative clauses on public order are not an exception, but together with a conflict of laws rule referring to foreign law, a general rule that determines the essence of the entire conflict regulation mechanism. The study highlights two main approaches to consolidating the concept of public order in conflict regulation — European and North American. It is concluded that the creation by the legislator based on the interests of public order of new ones, changing the existing norms, taking into account by the judge the damage / consequences of the application of conflict of laws for  public interests that are conflicting in the legal relationship of law and order, determine the leading place of the concept of public order in the general rule for determining the applicable law. 

 This article is devoted to the consideration of contemporary types of trademarks. The legislation of the Russian Federation and international agreements provide for different approaches to determining the  protectability of trademarks. The article includes the classification of  trademarks by the form of expression, by the number of subjects and the division of marks  into ordinary and well-known. The article analyzes the  norms of international agreements and national legislation on the protection of trademarks. It should be noted that in recent years there has been an increase in new non-traditional trademarks. Three-dimensional, sound, light and other equally interesting signs  can be noted as examples of non-traditional marks. Nevertheless, unscrupulous competitors register similar, confusingly similar trademarks, cause confusion among consumers about products, create an illusion about the high quality of the product being produced, imitate and imitate images of the desired trademark. And there are many examples. Judicial practice on the violation of trademark rights confirms this. It is important to emphasize that the emergence of new types of trademarks promotes business development and competition. Bona fide copyright holders will register new, different from other trademarks, which, possibly, over time will establish themselves in the market. 

 In accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the applicable law is determined, including in accordance with an international agreement. In 2020, amendments were made to the legislation of the Russian Federation, which  again put on the agenda the question of the importance of international treaties  in modern Russian law. In the light of the latest changes, if the norm of international treaties is recognized as unconstitutional, then this norm will not apply.
In addition, the issue of qualifications is very important in the context of when an international treaty becomes part of the legal system. With the adoption of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the  Determination of the Constitutional Court, many issues that caused a lively 
discussion have been clarified.
If we analyze more globally, the competition between states for the  development of the latest technologies and innovations has led to the blurring  of boundaries between legal systems, between public and private law, to the  evolution of the concept of sources of law in the sphere of internal law of states. These trends cannot but affect the development of modern private international law. Should be noted, the trend towards an increase in the number of concluded
international treaties, cross-border transactions within the framework of  integration associations does not take into the background the need to comply with moral norms in the 21st century.
Conscientious, partnership, mutually beneficial cooperation between states in a difficult post-like time can lead to an improvement in the development of the economies of states and stability in society, to an increase in legal culture in it. 

 Author attempts to determine the insolvency statute. Analyzing the Russian judicial practice in the insolvency, the author makes a conclusion that the  courts use general rules of international private law to defining of applicable law and use lex fori concursus, but are notintended to regulate cross-border insolvency.
Based on the analysis of foreign practice of regulating issues of applicable law in cross-border insolvency, the author considers possible exceptions to the lex fori concursus to protect certain categories of third parties from  unexpected interference in the legal relations of the parties to foreign law, to ensure the stability of trade and maintain legal certainty. 

 This article analyzes the interrelationships of three levels of regulation of cross-border activities in the oil and gas sector: non-state sources of lex petrolea, national and international law. Among the current trends, the author notes the  rapid development of the transnational normative plane due to  he«denationalization» of law; the process of«materialization» and its impact on the blurring of the boundaries between public and private law; the  transformation of the methodology and functions of classical private  international law. The central hypothesis is that the globalization of all sectors of the economy provokes the spontaneous growth of flexible, neutral, non-national «rules of law» that are convenient for direct application, bypassing the appeal to national legislation through the system of conflict of laws, which to a certain extent is a «leap into the unknown». It is predicted that in the future, private international law may lose its former importance as the main tool for solving the conflict of laws problem. 

 In the article it is analyzed the model agency agreements in the field of cross-border maritime agency, developed by international non-governmental organizations-the Baltic and International Council and the Federation of National Associations of Ship Brokers and Agents. The author examines the conditions contained in the forms of agreements, and compares the scope of the rights and obligations granted to the agent and the principal under each agreement. A special analysis in the article is devoted to the  study of the wording of the arbitration clause and the applicable law clause. As a result of the research, the author concludes that the developed agreements are based on the customs that exist in the ports, and also contain the services that are most in demand among the principals. 

 The article is devoted to the evaluation of the place of artificial intelligence (hereinafter — AI) in intellectual property law. Due to the recent developments, AI has ceased to be just an assistant and a tool for creativity  in the world of human authors. Rather it itself has become capable of creating works. The article considers the rules of copyright applied in various  States and enshrining the concept of an “author” and the possibility of recognizing AI as a subject of copyright creating a copyrightable work. The article also considers the rulesapplied to determine and regulate the process of creating a creative work. A conflict-of-laws issue is raised regarding the possibility of granting protection to works created by AI within the framework of cross-border relations, when, under the law of the state of origin (lex loci originis), the work is not subject to protection, but is protected under the law of the state where protection is sought (lex loci protectionis). Thus, crossborder copyright relations related to AI  are mainly implemented on the Internet, where the most effective mechanism  for protecting author’s rights is implemented by means of Creative Commons licenses. However, the lack of the human author’s participation and the original creativity element makes it impossible forthe AI to be recognized as a subject of law and, as a result, prevents copyright protection of the works created by the AI. Therefore, the author proposes to allocate the works created by AI to the public domain. 

This study highlights the problem of establishing the applicable law for cross-border insolvency relations of a legal entity. The author examines various approaches to the choice of the applicable law to the liability of controlling persons, provides foreign experience and reveals the main trends in resolving conflict issues. It is noted that the lack of legal regulation of cross-border insolvency relations, including conflict of laws rules, does not allow creditors to fully recover losses from controlling persons whose assets are in foreign jurisdiction. In order to eliminate contradictions in practice, it is proposed to consolidate in civil legislation an independent conflict of laws rule on the liability of controlling persons in relations of cross-border insolvency of a legal entity. It is concluded that the conflict-of-law choice of the applicable law to disputed legal relations directly depends on the jurisdiction of the state in which the proceedings on the cross-border insolvency of a legal entity are initiated.

 The growing sector of business related to the turnover of digital financial assets, utilitarian digital rights and cryptocurrencies leads to the fact that in most countries of the world administrative, financial, legal and other measures are taken aimed at protecting investors, countering fraud, collecting taxes and other tasks. However, until now, in the scientific legal literature, insufficient attention is paid to considering the degree of influence of certain measures on the development of the crypto industry as a whole. In this regard, the author of the article conducted a study of the influence of legal factors on the number of active ICO (Initial Coin Offering) companies in some jurisdictions. For the purpose of the study, methods of data collection and analysis were used to  obtain information about the number of active ICO projects at a particular time in different states, comparative legal methods, as well as visualization of the results obtained through the construction of time series graphs. The constructed graphs reflect the change in the number of ICO projects in some states before and after the appearance of legal acts regulating various areas of ICO companies ‘ activities. Also, the main characteristics of legal acts that have most influenced the change in the number of new ICO projects in different jurisdictions were described. The result of the work was the visualization of the relationship between the legal regulation of the turnover of digital financial assets, utilitarian digital rights, cryptocurrencies and the number of new ICO projects. The author also provides a justification for the position of the  significant influence of law on the trends of further development of the crypto industry in specific jurisdictions. 

 Characterization of a cross-border corporate agreement is a complex legal phenomenon. To date, neither the doctrine nor the judicial practice has developed a unified approach to resolving problems arising at various  stages of characterization of this type of contract. The article is devoted to the study of each stage of characterization of a cross-border corporate agreement and disclosure of its essence. In addition, the article provides a consistent analysis  of the problems that may arise at each stage of  characterization. Based on the study, the author formulated the definition of the characterization of a crossborder corporate agreement, identified the  stages (preliminary characterization, primary characterization, secondary characterization), and proposed possible ways to resolve the identified problems. The author has formulated the following way of characterization of a cross-border corporate  agreement: application of lexfori—at the stage of preliminary and primary qualifications; application of the chosen substantive law — at the stage of secondary qualification. 

 The article highlights the problem of concluding pre-dispute agreements  mediating the transfer of cross-border consumer disputes in online arbitration.  The author analyzes the main factors affecting the validity and enforceability of  agreements on online arbitration of cross-border disputes as one of the most promising dispute resolution mechanisms in the field of electronic commerce from the perspective of the American and European approaches. On the basis of the results of the study of judicial practice, scientific and practice-oriented materials, the article concludes that in order to recognize the validity and enforceability of a pre-dispute arbitration agreement with a consumer, professional participants of Internet transactions shall first of all take into account the peculiarities of historically formed approaches in different  jurisdictions and in the presence of legal grounds for the conclusion and effective application of such agreements, shall ensure the availability of the pre-dispute arbitration agreement on the online platform, taking into account the criteria and recommendations currently developed by practice. 

In this article, the author examines the legally established mechanisms of legal protection of software rights available to entrepreneurs engaged in cross-border business activities. The author conducted an analysis of existing legal acts, including international treaties, establishing different egimes of legal protection of software rights. The author highlights the pros and cons of each of the available mechanisms of legal protection of software rights. The article reveals the main aspects of software as an object of intellectual property that are subject to protection by each of the considered mechanisms of legal protection available to right holders. In order to determine the features of different types of software and its impact on the mechanism of legal protection of software to be chosen, the author provides a classification of software types depending on the functionality, goals and methods of using and distribution of specific software. In order to minimize the disadvantages of existing mechanisms of legal protection and to ensure the protection of the most valuable features of a specific software, the author proposes combined mechanisms of legal protection that are of practical importance for ensuring comprehensive protection of software rights in cross-border business activities.

In China, public policy is commonly defined as “social and public interest” or “public interest”, the understanding and boundaries of which are rather vague, which gives the court more a broad discretion in applying the public policy rule. The article examines the content and development of public order in the legislation of China. The author analyses the practice of application the public policy rule in China and provides statistical data about the ground for refusal of Chinese courts to enforce international commercial arbitration awards based on the information obtained from public databases containing Chinese court decisions. The author also provides examples of court decisions denying recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitration awards in mainland China and summarizes the rules for application by the Chinese people’s courts of the public policy rule, established in judicial decisions, and the tendencies in the development of China’s approach towards international commercial arbitration.