Full opinion text
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER TRAGER, District Judge. In December of 1998, plaintiffs Films by Jove (“FBJ”) and Soyuzmultfilm Studio (“SMS”) (collectively, “the plaintiffs” or “the third party defendants”) brought this action for copyright infringement, breach of contract, unfair competition and RICO violations against Joseph Berov, Natasha Orlova, Rigma America Corporation and the St. Petersburg Publishing House and Group (collectively, “the defendants”). On May 4, 1999, this court issued a preliminary injunction on consent of the defendants restraining them from reproduction of any motion picture in which plaintiffs own the copyright. On August 10, 2000, plaintiffs moved to hold the defendants in contempt for violating and continuing to violate the court’s injunction by selling copyrighted material allegedly belonging to the plaintiffs out of their St. Peters-burg Publishing House retail stores in Brooklyn. A hearing on that motion was held on August 17 and August 18, 2000, but the issue was left undecided, and the hearing was adjourned until October 10, 2000 after it became apparent that a third party, the Federal State Unitarian Enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio (“FSUESMS” or “the third party plaintiff’), would be intervening in the lawsuit as a third party plaintiff, seeking declaratory and injunc-tive relief necessary to secure its right of operative management of the copyrights to the films at issue, which, it claimed, were owned, strictly speaking, by the Russian government. On October 10, 2000, the contempt hearing was continued. The defendants, at that time, conceded a violation of the injunction in the event that the plaintiffs do, in fact, possess the copyrights to the animated films sold by the defendants. This same question of copyright ownership is now before the court. The plaintiffs have moved for summary judgment on this issue, and FSUESMS has cross-moved for summary judgment on its own claims to the copyrights. The final resolution of the plaintiffs’ contempt motion hinges on the disposition of the question of copyright ownership. Background (1) The parties agree that in 1936, the Soviet government expropriated from the Russian Orthodox Church the premises of the Church of St. Nicholas the Enlightener in Moscow, Russia and founded there a state enterprise called Soyuzmultfilm Studio, which, from 1936 until the present, created about 1600 animated motion picture films, many of which became extremely popular. See Mem. Law. Supp. Pis.’ Mot. Dis. 3D Party Compl. Pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6) [hereinafter “Pis.’ Mot. Dis.”] at 2; Notice of Mot. to Dismiss 3D Party Compl. Pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(6) [hereinafter “Pis.’ Not. Mot. Dis.”] at 2. From 1936 to 1989, Soyuzmultfilm Studio, like virtually all enterprises in the Soviet Union, operated as a state enterprise. See Pis.’ Mot. Dis. at 2. Unfortunately, as far as the history of Soyuzmultfilm Studio goes, the parties agree on little else, although their disagreements, as the patient reader will discover, are either disputes as to issues of law or disputes about facts that are not dispositive on any of the issues resolved in this opinion. According to plaintiffs, on December 20, 1989, as part of the ownership liberalization trend that accompanied Glasnost and Perestroika, Soyuzmultfilm Studio became a “lease enterprise” or “rent entity.” See id. at 2-3. “Many state companies became rent enterprises in the late 1980s and 1990s. In accordance with law, they stopped to be ‘state-owned’, but having in mind a further transition to privately held companies, they acquired another legal status, taking on lease only state buildings and equipment, but keeping their income and products for themselves and thus they received freedom from the state.” Pis.’ Ex. 15, Decl. of Mila Straupe [hereinafter “Straupe Decl.”] ¶ 11. The lease enterprise, operating under a ten-year lease agreement concluded with the Soviet State Film Committee known as Goskino, paid rent to the state for facilities and equipment, while the copyrights to the films, which, in the plaintiffs’ version of the story, originally belonged to the state enterprise, passed by operation of law from the no-longer-existent state enterprise Soyuz-multfilm Studio to the identically-named rent enterprise that took its place. See id. at 3; Pis.’ Response to Def.’s and Third Party Pis.’ Jnt. Statement Pursuant to Local Rule 56.1 [hereinafter “Pis.’ 56.1 Resp.”] ¶ 32; Straupe Decl. ¶ 12. On July 1, 1999, shortly before the lease was due to expire, the rent entity Soyuz-multfilm Studio was again reorganized, this time into a private joint stock company. See Straupe Decl. ¶ 12. That corporation, still named Soyuzmultfilm Studio, became the lawful successor to all of the rights and obligations of its predecessor, including, according to plaintiffs, all copyrights and trademarks. See id. The joint stock company, however, did not incorporate into its institutive capital the state-owned material assets, e.g., premises, equipment, furniture, etc., that had been leased to the rent enterprise by Goskino, and those state-owned assets reverted to the state upon the expiration of the lease term. See id. Accordingly, the joint stock company relocated in 1999 from its old offices in the Church of St. Nicholas the Enlightener to a new office in Krasno-gorsk, a Moscow suburb. See id. From the early nineties on, the lease enterprise and SMS, its successor, have had “to put up with a fight in Russia once spearheaded by Goskino and now [Sovek-sportfilm] and the State Property Ministry to take control of the films produced by the studios of Russia during the USSR.” See Sept. 22 Borsten Decl. ¶ 6. The rights of the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio and its successor, the joint stock company SMS, among other studios, were vindicated in various court decisions, see Decl. of Rimma Erokhina, Ex. 6, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld, most definitively in a June 19, 1996 decision of the Commercial Court of Paris, which ruled for Soyuzmultfilm Studio, Mosfilm Studio, Lenfilm Studio and Films by Jove and against Soveksportfilm, finding that economic legislation passed by the USSR in 1986 and thereafter had put an end to the state monopoly on foreign trade, and So-veksportfilm could no longer license films produced by Russian film studios without the agreement of the studios, which were the rightful copyright holders. See Ex. 14, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld. The French court noted a series of under-the-table transactions that Soveksportfilm had engaged in in order to transfer to itself, without consent, rights to 125 films owned by the studios. See id. Around the same time that SMS was leaving its Church of St. Nicholas the En-lightener location, then-Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, responding to the demands of Goskino and a faction of approximately fifty people displeased with the leadership of a certain Mr. Skuliabin (spelled elsewhere as “Sculabin”), the director of the lease enterprise Soyuzmult-film Studio as of 1993, issued a decree recommending the creation of a new state enterprise for the exploitation of the Church of St. Nicholas facilities vacated by the joint stock company. See Pis.’ Mot. Dis. at 5; Pis.’ Ex. 17 (hereinafter “Ste-phashin Order”); Tr. of Hearing on Aug. 17, 2000 at 20; Decl. of Vitoslav Shilobreev attached to FSUE SMS’s Order to Show Cause. On October 11, 1999, that faction of SMS officers who had been unsuccessful in their attempts to be elected to SMS’s governing board proceeded to register the newly-organized “Federal State Unitarian Enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio.” See id. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church had initiated a lawsuit to reclaim the property that had been expropriated from it in 1936. See id. According to the plaintiffs' — and, it should be reiterated, everything discussed heretofore and postdating the creation of the lease enterprise is the plaintiffs’ version of the facts— FSUESMS, faced, by virtue of the Church’s claims, with the loss of its only assets, viz., the premises and their facilities, decided to make a unilateral claim that it, and not the joint stock company SMS, was the “real” Soyuzmultfilm Studio. See id. To accomplish this end, FSUESMS, working closely with Goskino and the State Ministry of Property, see Sept. 22 Borsten Deck, advanced the contention that the lease enterprise Soyuz-multfilm Studio either had never existed or, at the very least, had not taken possession of anything other than the material assets of the state enterprise Soyuzmult-film Studio and further, that the state enterprise had continued to exist in a latent, non-functioning form during the entire pendency of the lease (1989-1999). See Straupe Decl. ¶ 15. FSUESMS then, instead of attempting to register as a new company, requested to register as an amended form of the non-existent state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio. It proceeded to request to register amendments to the extinguished charter of the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio, which had ceased to exist in 1989. See id. ¶ 16. These amendments were mistakenly and illegally registered by the Moscow City Registration Chamber in October of 1999. See id. ¶ 17. Thus, by the close of 1999, two independent enterprises, SMS and FSUESS, were both registered by the government and both claimed to be the rightful heirs of the state enterprise So-yuzmultfilm Studio and its extensive film library. So much for the plaintiffs’ version of Soyuzmultfilm Studio’s colorful history. The defendants and FSUESMS offer a fundamentally different account. According to them, the copyrights in the films made by the state enterprise Soyuz-multfilm Studio belonged at all times to the Soviet state and were merely under the operative management of the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio. See Mem. Law. Opp. Mot. for Partial Sum. J. by Pls./3rd Party Defs. and Supp. Cross-Mot. for Sum. J. by 3rd Party PI. [hereinafter “FSUESMS’s Cross-Mot.”] at 2. The state enterprise administered those copyrighted films on behalf of the state and Goskino, the state agency responsible for managing the funding for state film production. See id. at 3. The creation of the lease enterprise So-yuzmultfilm Studio in 1989 as part of the restructuring of the Soviet economy did not terminate the existence of the state enterprise Soyuzmulfilm Studio. See id. at 4. Rather, the state enterprise had suspended film production during the period of the lease. See id. The lease itself, entered into with the lease enterprise So-yuzmultfilm Studio by Goskino, as the funding entity for stateowned film assets, transferred to the lease enterprise only material assets, viz., the premises and equipment, located at the site of the Church where the state enterprise had heretofore been active. See id. at 3. The copyrights to the state enterprise’s film library continued to be owned by the state. See id. In 1994, the “state enterprise” form was abolished and replaced by a similar “state Unitarian enterprise” form by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, First Part (1994), and the state enterprise So-yuzmultfilm had to be restructured accordingly. See Maggs Decl., attached to FSUESMS’s Not. of Cross-Mot. and Cross-Mot. for Sum. J. [hereinafter “Maggs Decl.”] at 5 (Peter B. Maggs is defendants’/FSUESMS’s Russian law expert). This restructuring was effectuated in 1999 when FSUESMS was created by order of Prime Minister Stepashin and registered soon thereafter. See FSUESMS’s Cross-Mot. at 4. Also in 1999, “certain employees of the lease enterprise formed a fully private joint-stock company ... also calling itself ‘Soyuzmult-film Studios.’ ” Id. That company proceeded to claim itself as the rightful successor to the lease enterprise and the rightful owner of the copyrights in the film library created during the era of the state enterprise’s active operation. See id. At this point, the narratives of the parties begin to converge. A series of lawsuits ensued between SMS and FSUESMS, with each trying to nullify the registration of the other. Although the validity of corporate registrations and not the ownership of copyrights was the central issue being decided, some of these cases found occasion to address the possession of the copyrights in the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio’s library. The decisions of lower courts, which ruled in favor of SMS, found that the right to the copyrights in the films and trademark in the name Soyuzmultfilm Studio, among other intangible assets, passed to the lease enterprise by operation of law and was legitimately transferred to the joint stock company SMS when the lease enterprise sold its assets to that newly-formed entity prior to the expiration of the lease term. See June 5, 2000 Decision, Ex. 19, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld [hereinafter “Jun. 5 Dec.”]; June 24, 2000 Decision, Ex. 20, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld [hereinafter “Jun. 24 Dec.”]. In addition, these decisions found no connection between the 1936 State Enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio and its purported 1999 resurrection in the form of FSUESMS. See id. Accordingly, the FSUESMS’s registration was cancelled. See id. However, these decisions were vacated by the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow, which premised its conclusions on the failure of the lower courts to consider evidence that the copyrights and other non-material assets of the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio may have belonged to the state at the time that Goskino concluded the lease agreement with the lease enterprise and that these assets, consequently, never passed to either the lease enterprise or to the joint stock company: The lease enterprise “Studio Souzmult-film” [sic] was established on the basis of a rent agreement without the right to purchase all the property of the enterprise, which was state-owned. Moreover, the composition and the quantity of the property subject to be rented out was not identified, because the transference-acceptance act was never recorded and documents listing the property were never produced. In the process of transferring the leased enterprise to a joint-stock company it was necessary to separate the property of the enterprise from the property owned by the state and include in a separate balance sheet. Furthermore, the separate balance sheet was worked out independently by the leased enterprise, without the participation of the owner, who leased out the enterprise. This balance was then not presented to the owner for approval. The Court when settling the dispute did not consider the fact if the act of transference can be considered accurate, which defined the size of the Charter capital of the joint-stock company and identified the size of the property owned by the state. The issue is if the leased enterprise has the right to independently and without the approval of the property owner to transfer according to the act of transference to the joint-stock company the property that does not belong to it. The Court also ignored this fact. The decision reached by the Court that the Charter capital did not include state-owned property was based on incomplete evidence. The conclusions of the Court that the property acquired in 1990-91 was not state-owned was not based on factual evidence. Aug. 18 Dec. Importantly, on September 19, 2000, the Higher Arbitrazh Court of the Russian Federation denied SMS a further appeal at the current time but instructed, for the purposes of remand, that the August 18, 2000 opinion of the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow, quoted above, is not a binding view of the evidence in the case, and the lower court should allow SMS to argue its position on remand. Arifulin Letter, Ex. 7, attached to Decl. of Paul Stephan. On remand, the Moscow Region Arbi-trazh Court issued an opinion on December 26, 2000 in the suit by FSUESMS, the Ministry of State Property of the Russian Federation and Goskino against SMS. That opinion, by and large, reinstated and expanded upon the earlier lower court findings: According to Article 486 of the RSFSR Civil Code which was in effect at the time of the transformation of the state enterprise, “Film Studios Soyuz-multfilm” into a lease enterprise with the identical name, the copyrights to a film belong to the enterprise that shot the film. According to Article 498 of the RSFSR Civil Code, copyrights of an organization do not have term limitation. When the organization is transformed the copyrights shall be transferred to the successor organization. Therefore, copyrights to animated films created by the state enterprise “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” were transferred by operation of law to its successor — [l]ease enterprise “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm.” A lease enterprise with an identical name became the successor of rights of the state enterprise “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” according to the existing laws, i.e., Article 16 of the ... Fundamental Principles [of|[L]egis-lation and Union Republics on Lease. Copyrights were not and could not be transferred by the lease agreement because they had been transferred by operation of law and cannot be limited by an agreement. Therefore, the copyrights of the lease enterprise are not related to the issues of the lease agreement, and the expiration of that agreement does not cause the copyrights of the [l]ease enterprise “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” to expire. At the time of the transformation of the [l]ease enterprise into a [shareholding] company[,] the lease enterprise had the copyrights to its animated film[s] by law. Pursuant to Article [486] of the RSFSR Civil Code, copyright in the animated feature films belonged to “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” and not to Gosk-ino USSR or any other representative of the state. According to RSFSR Article 496 the copyrights to the animated feature films made by “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” belonged to the Studio without time limit, and upon its reorganization, the copyrights went to [l]ease enterprise “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” also with no term limitations. Thus Goskino of the Russian Federation could not have transferred copyrights of the animated movies of “Film Studios Soyuzmultfilm” to the Lease Enterprise for lease because Goskino never had those rights to begin with. [FSUESMS’s] argument that the copyrights to the animated films belong to [it] has no foundation, based on the submitted documents and oral arguments of both sides in the lawsuit, because, pursuant to Articles 23, 37 of the RSFSR Civil Code and Article 11 of the Fundamentals of Civil Legislation USSR and Republics, a state enterprise, after leasing out an enterprise and complex of facilities and property, could not exist anymore, and could no longer be a legal person at the same time because it did not have its own property and legal capacity. When leasing out an enterprise (state property) [takes] place in accordance with paragraph 4, Article 16 of the Fundamental Principles on Lease, which established full succession of rights to the state enterprise assumed by the [l]ease [enterprise, then according to Article 37 of the RSFSR Civil Code[,] this action shall constitute an actual reorganization of a state enterprise. Dec. 26, 2000 Dec., Ex. 8, attached to Decl. of Paul Stephan [hereinafter “Dec. 26 Dec.”]. The December 26 decision was affirmed on appeal on January 22, 2001. However, on April 20, 2001, well after the motion in this case had been submitted, the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow, the same court that had earlier remanded the case, issued a ruling overturning the December 26, 2000 and January 22, 2001 decisions. See Apr. 20, 2001 Ruling [hereinafter “Apr. 20 Dec.”], attached to Aff. of Vladimir Zlobinsky of May 9, 2001. That ruling began the core of analysis by noting that Article 59 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation provides that the act transferring property from one owner to another is the document that “defines the scope of rights and obligations being transferred to the respective recipient of rights.” Id. at 5. But, in this case, because that transfer document is signed only by the deputy director of the lease enterprise and not signed at all by the general director of the joint stock company, it is “not deemed [to be] indisputable evidence establishing succession rights” from the lease enterprise to the joint stock company. Accordingly, the court goes on to analyze the transfer in more detail: At the time of the creation of the leased enterprise “Film Studio Soyuz-multfilm” on the basis of the assets of the film studio, no determination was made as to the specific property to be transferred for lease and no property transfer and acceptance act was made. Therefore, it is impossible to determine which property was leased, and therefore impossible to determine the rights of the leased enterprise in respect of the state property subsequently transferred to the joint stock company. According to paragraph 1.2 of Charter of the leased enterprise the leased property remains property of the state. It is being utilized by the lessee. According to Article 295 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation an enterprise has no right to sell the real property it is utilizing, to lease it ... or to otherwise dispose of it without the owner’s consent. Therefore, the court’s conclusion that the property transfer act is not subject to approval by the State Property Ministry, which acts for the property owner, is not based in law. The consent of the owner of state property was never obtained!;] the evidence is missing in this case. Therefore, the leased enterprise, in violation of the aforementioned legal requirements, disposed of the state property by transferring it to the joint stock company. Id. at 6. The court went on to nullify the joint stock company’s registration. See id. at 7. As yet, although SMS represented at oral argument that they are appealing the decision to the Higher Arbitrazh Court of the Russian Federation, see Oral Arg. at 66, there has been no word about whether that court will accept the appeal or what the result of any such appeal will be. However, this situation was significantly complicated by the other series of decisions in the case, the opinions on remand in the suit by SMS against FSUESMS. On January 25, 2001, the lower court refused to nullify FSUESMS’s registration and found that the succession of rights of the lease enterprise from the state enterprise, as stipulated in Item 4, Article 16 of the Fundamentals of USSR law “On Leasing,” arises not as a result of the conversion of the state enterprise into the lease enterprise, but by the operation of the agreement on lease of the property complex which definition is given in Article 132 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Because the succession of rights is based on the lease agreement, it has a temporal nature and is restricted by the terms of such agreement. The succession of the lessee from a state enterprise can not continue after termination of the lease agreement because the lessee in this event, in accordance with Article 664 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, is obliged to return the leased property of the state. In this case the term of the agreement on the lease of the property complex of the state enterprise expired on December 20,1999. Discussion of January 25, 2001 decision within Decision of April 3, 2001, Ex. B, attached to Decl. of Anya Zontova, at 2. On appeal, the conclusion of the January 25, 2001 decision, viz., that the registration of the FSUESMS was not to be nullified, was upheld, but the appellate court, in a decision issued on April 3, 2001 specifically took issue with the bases for the January ruling: After examining all the case materials, including the arguments of appeals claims and listening to the representatives of the appellants participating in the case, the Appeals Court concluded that the Lower Court rightfully denied to satisfy the demands of the appealed claimsL H]owever, the Appeals Court cannot agree with the conclusions by the Lower Court in its decision denying the appeal. Thus, the Appeals Court considers as wrongful the Lower Court’s statement that the succession of rights of the lease enterprise that was based on the lease agreement, has a temporal nature and is restricted by the term of such agreement. The Lower Court’s conclusion does not comply with the law which was in effect at the time of concluding the agreement on the lease of the property complex of the state enterprise of December 20,1989.... Item 4, Article 16 of the Fundamentals on Leasing stipulates that a lease enterprise becomes the successor of material rights and obligations of the state enterprise leased by it, including its right to use land and other natural resources. After signing the agreement, the organization of lessees receives in the established order the property of the state enterprise and acquires the status of a lease agreement. The fact of signing the lease agreement determines the formation of a lease enterprise. As it takes place, the activity of the state enterprise ceases through the conversion resulting from the formation of a lease enterprise on the basis of a state enterprise (Article 16 of the Fundamentals on Leasing.) Thus, after signing the agreement of December 20, 1989 by the USSR State Committee on Cinematography and the labor collective of [the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio], the activity of the state enterprise ..., created by decree # 246/001 of June 10, 1936, ceased. By operation of law, the successor of rights of this enterprise became the lease enterprise [Soyuzmulfilm Studio], which later was converted into the joint stock company [Soyuzmultfilm Studio] and continues to be such at the present time. The Lower court’s conclusion about the resumption of activity of the state enterprise [Soyuzmultfilm Studio] after the lease agreement ended, and returning to it the rights and obligations which have been passed on to the lease enterprise is erroneous, because the existing law does not stipulate the implementation of such a legal construct. The succession of rights is tightly linked with the legal capacity of a legal entity. It is an integral property of a legal entity, not of a leased property complex. Therefore when the property is returned after the agreement ended, there is no automatic return of the succession of rights and obligations. In addition, as it was mentioned previously, the state enterprise [Soyuz-multfilm Studio] ceased its activity by operation of law, for which reason any resumption of specifically its activity is impossible. Apr. 3, 2001 Dec., Ex. B, attached to Decl. of Anya Zontova [hereinafter “Apr. 3 Dec.”] at 4-5. The Appeals Court, however, went on to conclude that although SMS inherited the rights of the state enterprise after the expiration of the lease term, this did not mean that FSUESMS was invalidly registered. “The registration of the newly formed [FSUESMS] does not violate the Plaintiffs civil rights and interests protected by law,” the court wrote. Id. at 5. FSUESMS’s charter, the court found, did not specifically stipulate that it had inherited the rights of the state enterprise So-yuzmultfilm Studio, and a mere reference in Item 1.1 of that charter to the Order of 1936, which had created the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio, was not grounds to invalidate the registration. Id. That decision, in turn, was appealed to the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow, the same court responsible for the April 20, 2001 reversal of lower court rulings in the suit brought by FSUESMS and others against SMS. This time, however, in a decision issued on June 4, 2001, the court affirmed the decision below. It summarized the holding below as follows: The Appeals Court has established that on December 20, 1989, the labor collective of the state enterprise [Soyuz-multfilm Studio] concluded the agreement with the USSR State Committee on Cinematography on the lease of the state enterprise property (case file 30-33, Vol. 1) after the signing of which, the activity of the state enterprise [Soyuz-multfilm Studio], created by decree of No. 246/001 of June 10, 1936 ceased. The successor of rights of this state enterprise by operation of law became the lease enterprise [Soyuzmultfilm Studio,] which later was converted into the joint stock company [Soyuzmultfilm Studio]. The succession of rights, in the opinion of the Appeals Court, is tightly linked with legal capacities of a legal entity. It is an integral property of a legal entity, not a leased property complex. Therefore when the property is returned after the agreement ended, there is no automatic return of the succession of rights and obligations. However, the act of the registration by MRC of the [FSUESMS] on November 10, 1999, disputed by the Plaintiff, in the Appeals Court’s view, does not violate the rights and interests of the Plaintiff, because the [FSUESMS] is a newly formed entity on the basis of the state property and does not affect the civil rights of the [joint stock company So-yuzmultfilm Studio] and its interests protected by law. June 4, 2001 Dec., Ex. A, attached to Decl. of Anya Zontova [hereinafter “Jun. 4 Dee.”] at 2-3. The FSUESMS, according to the court, appealed the ruling in order to alter what the court described as “the motivational part” of the ruling, id. at 3, in other words, the reasoning underlying the decision, while SMS appealed the ruling that had allowed FSUESMS’s registration to stand. See id. The court refused both appeals: The case materials show that on December 20, 1989 between USSR State Committee on Cinematography (lessor) and the labor collective of “Kinostudiya Soyuzmultfilm” (lessee) the lease agreement was concluded, under which the film studio were given for a lease use, for the term of 10 years, the main and circulating assets (equipment, appliances and other commodity and material assets) which were in the film studio’s balance sheets at the moment the agreement became effective, as well as the monies received from the centralized sources of funding under the plans of major construction work and material and technical procurement for the 12th and 13th five-year periods (Items 1.1, 5.6 of the Agreement). Pursuant to Item 1.2 of the Agreement, the leased property remains state property and in the economic management of the lessee. As this took place, the composition and the quantity of the leased property was not determined, because the receipt and transfer acts were not executed, and the documents identifying that property were not made. The executive committee of the Moscow Sverdlovskiy regional council registered by the Decision of November 14 1990 the Charter of the lease enterprise [Soyuzmultfilm Studio] which was adopted on January 4, 1990 at the conference of the film studio labor collective. Item 4, Article 16 of the Fundamentals of USSR law “On Leasing” stipulates that a lease enterprise becomes the successor of property rights and obligations of a state enterprise that was leased by it, including its rights to dispose of the land and other natural resources. Thus, the Appeals Court has made the rightful conclusion that after signing the lease agreement, the activity of the state enterprise [Soyuzmultfilm Studio] created by decree No. 246/001 of June 10, 1936 ceased. On October 11, 1999, a new legal entity was formed, the [FSUESMS]. This enterprise was created on the basis of the Order of the Russian Federation Government of June 30, 1999 No. 1038-R (Vol. 1, case file 80) in connection with the expiration in December 1999 of the term of the December 20, 1989 agreement with the labor collective of [Soyuzmultfilm Studio], on the lease of the film studio’s assets which were in state property. Pursuant to Article 13 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, a non-normative act of a state body or a local government body is subject to being invalidated by the court, in the event this act simultaneously does not comply with the law or other legal acts and it violates a legal entity’s rights and interests protected by law. The court fully and thoroughly investigated the circumstances of the case, evaluated in the aggregate the arguments collected regarding the case, and came to a rightful conclusion that the registration of the newly formed [FSUESMS] does not violate the civil rights and interests of [SMS] protected by law. In the Charter of the newly formed enterprise, the succession of rights from the state enterprise [Soyuzmultfilm Studio] is not stipulated. The one and only indication in the Charter’s Item 1.1 of the Order No. 246/001 of June 10, 1936 is not grounds for invalidating the registration of the state enterprise. Considering the aforementioned statements, the Cassation Court finds that the Arbitrazh Court rendered the case full and comprehensive consideration, in compliance with the norms of the material and procedural laws. Id. at 4-5. As of time of the writing of this opinion, I have not received any information about possible appeals from this ruling. Therefore, at this time the ruling stands that the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio ceased to exist at the time of the formation of the lease enterprise, that a new entity, FSUESMS, was created in 1999 to take over the state property, i.e., material assets, held by the lease enterprise for a ten-year period between 1989 and 1999 and that the other rights and assets belonging to the lease enterprise passed by operation of law to SMS, its successor, in 1999. (2) On May 22, 1992, an agreement was signed between the lease enterprise and a California corporation called Films by Jove, Inc. by which the parties agreed, in exchange for valuable consideration, to make the latter the exclusive licensee worldwide for the Soyuzmultfilm film library. See Pis.’ Mot. Dis. at 3. FBJ thereafter invested more than three million dollars to restore, update and revoice the library. See id. Partnered with the world-famous dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, FBJ employed well-known actors from around the world to revoice the films in multiple languages: English-language versions: Jessica Lange, Kathleen Turner, Bill Murray, Shirley MacLaine, Charlton Heston, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jim Belushi; French-language versions: Catherine Deneuve and Irene Jacob; Spanish-language versions: Julio Iglesias, Maria Conchita Alonso and Edward James Ol-mos. See id. ¶ 5. When the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio was reorganized into SMS, the. agreement between the lease enterprise and FBJ also passed to SMS. Defendant Rigma America Corporation, doing business as St. Petersburg Publishing House, operates several stores in Brooklyn, a warehouse and major wholesale / distribution and duplication facilities for Russian-language entertainment products, including audio and videocassettes, CDs and DVDs. See Pis.’ Mot. Dis. at 4. Defendant Joseph Berov is Rigma’s sole officer, director and stockholder. See Defs.’ Mem. Opp. Pis.’ Mots, for Partial Sum. J. and for Ord. of Contempt and Supp. Defs.’ Cross-Mot. for Partial Sum. J. [hereinafter “Defs.’ Cross-Mot.”] at 5. Defendant Natasha Orlova, according to the defendants, is “a sometime employee of Rigma who has no ownership interest in the company.” Id. FBJ and Rigma concluded an agreement on July 20, 1998 to give defendants the rights to distribute certain films to which FBJ has the exclusive rights. See Pis. Mot. Dis. at 4. The agreement permitted distribution of a special edition of these titles only for retail purposes within the defendants’ retail catalogue. See id. Following what they perceived to be repeated violations of the agreement and of their copyrights in the films, FBJ instituted this present action. A preliminary injunction in plaintiffs’ favor was entered on defendants’ consent on May 4, 1999. As has been detailed above, defendants have admitted to violating the injunction, and the sole issue now before the court is whether or not FBJ is the legitimate copyright holder in the films sold by the defendants. Discussion (1) Plaintiffs first contend that FSUESMS has no standing to bring suit in this court because its registration has been cancelled, and therefore, it does not legally exist in Russia. See PL’s Mot. Dis. at 7. As plaintiffs have indicated, to make a determination about whether a foreign corporation has standing to sue, the courts must look to the law of the country where the corporation is or claims to be incorporated: A corporation organized and existing under the laws of a foreign state which we have recognized and with which we have comity may ordinarily seek the aid of our courts in assertion of its rights, even against our own citizens. If the existence of the corporation, its capacity to sue, or the authority of its directors to represent it or to bring the action is challenged, we look to the charter and the law of its corporate domicile for the data upon which we can rest our determination of such questions. Russian Reinsurance Co. v. Stoddard, 240 N.Y. 149, 147 N.E. 703 (Court of Appeals, New York, 1925). Also, Fed.R.Civ.P. 17(b) explicitly provides that “[t]he capacity of a corporation to sue or be sued shall be determined by the law under which it was organized.” Plaintiffs argue that because FSUESMS’s registration was cancelled by the June 5, 2000 and July 24, 2000 Russian court decisions, FSUESMS is not a legal enterprise, cannot do business under Russian law, see Art. 135 of the Russian Arbitration Procedural Code, and therefore, does not have standing to sue in this court. See Pis.’ Mot. Dis. at 8-9. Plaintiffs add that the August 18, 2000 decision by the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow that is relied on by FSUESMS did not overturn the June 5, 2000 and July 24, 2000 decisions but rather, addressed itself to the March 6, 2000 and June 7, 2000 lower court decisions in the suit brought by FSUESMS against SMS. See id. at 9-10, 147 N.E. 703. The legitimacy of FSUESMS’s registration was not litigated in those cases. See id. Plaintiffs’ memorandum in support of their motion to dismiss is dated September 22, 2000. On September 25, 2000, the Federal Arbitrazh Court for the District of Moscow issued a brief order vacating and remanding for reconsideration the June 5, 2000 and July 24, 2000 decisions relied upon by the plaintiffs that cancelled FSUESMS’s registration. See Sept. 25 Dec. As of the date of this opinion, a decision on remand has upheld FSUESMS’s registration, and that decision has been affirmed at two successive appellate levels. Although there is one last appeal that may be taken, at the present time FSUESMS’s registration has been held valid, and accordingly, it will be presumed that FSUESMS has the necessary standing to bring suit in this court until such time as a Russian court with authority to revoke FSUESMS’s corporate registration should decide otherwise. (2) In order for Films by Jove to be able to pursue its claim against the defendants, FBJ must be the rightful owner of the copyrights in the relevant films. FBJ claims its rights in the copyrights on the basis of the 1992 agreement between it and the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio, which purported to make FBJ the exclusive worldwide licensee in the films produced by the state enterprise and lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio. The first question that must be answered, then, in determining whether or not FBJ is currently entitled to maintain a suit for copyright infringement is whether or not the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio was the rightful owner of the copyrights at the time when it licensed them to FBJ. The issue of initial copyright ownership must be decided in accordance with Russian law. The Second Circuit has endorsed this view. See Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82, 90 (2d Cir.1998) (“Since the works at issue were created by Russian nationals and first published in Russia, Russian law is the appropriate source of law to determine the issues of ownership of rights.”). Many of the works at issue are “restored works,” which are no longer in the public domain as a result of the Uruguay Rounds Agreements Act of 1995. See Pis.’ Not. of Mot. to Dis. 3rd Party Compl. Purs, to FRCP 12(b)(6) at 6. 17 U.S.C. 104A(b) awards ownership of a restored work to “the author or initial rightholder of the work as determined by the law of the source country of the work.” The source country, as defined by 17 U.S.C. 104A(h)(8) is Russia. In any case, therefore, Russian law applies, and all parties are in agreement on this. See FSUESMS’s Cross-Mot. at 5. No similar agreement exists, however, on the question of what Russian law has to say about the paradigm this case involves. Each side presents experts in Soviet and Russian copyright law to support its position. It should be noted, in this connection, that “[djetermination of a foreign country’s law is an issue of law.” Itar-Tass, 153 F.3d at 92; see Fed. R.Civ.P. 44.1; Bassis v. Universal Line, S.A, 436 F.2d 64, 68 (2d Cir.1970). Therefore, disagreements among experts about Russian law do not stand in the way of a grant of summary judgment in favor of either party. Both parties agree that in Russian copyright law, as in its American counterpart, “[o]nly the successor to the primary rights of the author may further transfer the rights. There must be a continuous chain of transfers starting with the Film Studios. Otherwise a party conducting the transfer does not have the authorship rights and cannot transfer such right to anybody else.” Deck of Professor V.A. Dozortsev ¶ 1, Ex. 10, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld. Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ principal experts, Professor Paul B. Stephan, who is Percy Brown, Jr. Professor of Law and the E. James Kelly, Jr. Class of 1965 Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and Professor Michael Newcity, who is Deputy Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Duke University begin by arguing that the copyrights belonged, as an initial matter, to the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio. The suggestion is that if the copyrights were owned by the state enterprise Soyuzmult-film Studio, they could have been legitimately transferred to the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio, whereupon the lease enterprise could have concluded an equally legitimate agreement with FBJ. If, on the other hand, as FSUESMS’s expert, Prof. Maggs, argues, the copyrights were never owned by the state enterprise Soyuzmult-film Studio, they could never have been legitimately transferred to the lease enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio, which, therefore, could not make them the subject of an agreement with FBJ. We will see in due course whether or not this starkly polarized way of putting the question holds up under scrutiny. Professor Newcity first notes that the films at issue in this case were initially published between the years 1946 and 1995, the majority between 1964 and 1990. See Newcity Decl. of January 23, 2001 [hereinafter “First Newcity Decl.”] ¶ 21. For most of this period, the copyright law in effect was either the U.S.S.R. Fundamentals of Copyright Law adopted by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (“R.S.F.S.R.”) in October, 1928 or the R.S.F.S.R. Civil Code which superseded the 1928 law in 1964. See id. It is not disputed that the 1964 law and the 1928 law were, in all relevant respects, identical. See id. ¶ 22. The 1964 law was itself expressly superseded by the Russian Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights in 1993. See id. ¶ 21. Article 3 of the Decree of the All-Union Central Executive Committee of the R.S.F.S.R., dated October 8, 1928, “On Copyright,” provided that copyright in a film was granted to the film studio that published it. Id. ¶ 24. Article 486 of the 1964 Civil Code, entitled “Copyright in Motion Pictures, Television Films, Radio and Television Transmissions,” provided that Copyright in a motion picture or a television film is owned by the enterprise which made the film. Copyright in an amateur motion picture [or] television film is owned by its authors or coauthors. The author of the script, the composer, director, chief cameraman, artistic director, and the authors of other works which constitute a component part of a motion picture or a television film own the copyright in each of their works. Copyright in a radio or television transmission is owned by the radio or television organization transmitting it, and the copyrights in the works included in that transmission are owned by their authors. Id. ¶ 23. Thus, it would appear that the copyrights in all films during the period of the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm’s active existence, 1936-1989, would have belonged to that same enterprise. However, FSUESMS’s principal expert, Peter B. Maggs, Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, contends that this interpretation of Article 486 is inaccurate. See Maggs Decl. ¶ 18. According to him, the above translation of that article erroneously uses the terminology “is owned by,” whereas “[c]opyright in a cinematic film or a television film belongs to the enterprise which has effectuated the filming” would have been the more appropriate translation. Id. (emphasis added by Professor Maggs). The Russian verb that gave rise to this dispute, transcribed into the Latin alphabet, is “prinadlezhat,” which, according to both Professor Maggs and Professor Newcity, can' be translated as either “to belong to” or “to own.” See Maggs Decl. ¶ 18; First Newcity Decl. ¶ 27. Professor Newcity provides entries from two dictionaries which suggest that “prinadlezhat” can be translated in either fashion. See Ex. 1, attached to First Newcity Decl. But, despite this ambiguity, Professor Maggs insists that “belongs to” is the proper translation in the current context. What hinges on this distinction, at least according to Professor Maggs, is the question of who actually owns the copyrights, the state enterprise or the state itself. The state, Professor Maggs argues, was the actual owner of the pre 1989 copyrights. See Maggs Decl. ¶ 18. State enterprises such as Soyuzmultfilm Studio did not own property but rather, held the property of the Soviet state in “operative management,” which means, simply, that the state enterprise was responsible for managing property owned by the state. See id. In support of this interpretation of the law, Professor Maggs offers two pieces of evidence, Article 94 of the 1964 Russian Civil Code and an excerpt from a text, Soviet Law (London: Butterworths, 1983), by Professor William Butler, an expert on Soviet law. The former reads: The state is the sole owner of all state property State property assigned to state organizations is in the operative management of these organizations exercised within the limits established by law, which exercise — in accordance with the purposes of their activity, planned tasks, and the purpose of the property- — -the rights of possession, use, and disposition of the property. Id. ¶ 18. The latter states: The State is regarded as the sole owner of all state property In those instances when the State allocates a portion of its property to State organisations it does not relinquish ownership but places the property in the ‘operative management’ of that organization whose right of possession, use, and disposition must be exercised in accordance with law, the charter of the organization, and the purpose of the property. Id. ¶ 19. Plaintiffs contest Professor Maggs’ reading of Article 486 as well as the significance of both pieces of evidence. Professor Newcity first notes that the relevant paragraph from Article 486 applies both to state and to non-state enterprises, and, as Professor Maggs concedes, non-state enterprises have full ownership of their copyrights. See First Newcity Decl. ¶ 28; Maggs Decl. ¶ 18 (“In particular, under Article 486, if a non-state enterprise, for instance a cooperative, made a motion picture, it would become the owner of the intellectual property rights in the picture, while if a state enterprise made a motion picture it would have the right of operative management of the intellectual property rights in the picture.”). Why, to frame Professor Newcity’s argument sharply, would the drafters of the copyright statute allow the ambiguous word “prinadlezhat” to designate two very different levels of ownership or control depending on whether the enterprise of relevance is a state or non-state enterprise without making that distinction apparent? Furthermore, the word “prenadlezhat” is used throughout the rest of Article 486 to refer to copyright ownership on the part of individuals, as opposed to enterprises, and there is no dispute that the word would certainly denote true ownership in these contexts. See Newcity Decl. ¶ 29. Why, once again, use the same ambiguous word in consecutive paragraphs from within a single provision of a code to denote two very different levels of ownership / control without taking care to note any such differentiation with particularity? Furthermore, Professor Newcity notes, Professor Maggs has cited no scholarly or judicial authority in support of his interpretation. See id. ¶ 35. The sole authorities in his favor, Article 94 of the 1964 R.S.F.S.R. Civil Code and the above-cited excerpt from Professor' Butler’s book, are irrelevant because they refer to physical or material property, not intellectual property. See id. ¶ 36. Article 94, Professor Newcity points out, is taken from Part II of the R.S.F.S.R. Civil Code, which relates to the law of tangible property used by state enterprises to produce goods and services. See id. In support of this view, Professor Newcity cites Article 95: Article 95. Objects of the Right of State Oimership State property extends to all land, its minerals, waters, forests, factories, mills, pits, mines, and electric power stations, to rail, water, air, and motor transport, banks, means of communication, agricultural, trading, communal, and other enterprises organised by the state, and also to the main housing resources in towns and urban settlements. The state may also own property of any other kind. The land, its minerals, waters, and forests, being the exclusive property of the state, may be granted out for use only. See id. Copyright, Professor Newcity notes, is addressed by Part IV of the Civil Code. See id. Therefore, Article 94 is inapplicable to the case at bar. See id. Adducing Professor Maggs’ own statement that “[u]nder normal Soviet civil law drafting style, the ‘General Provisions’ of a statute apply also to the more specific narrower types of transactions covered by the statute, unless clearly negated,” Maggs Decl. ¶ 38, Professor Newcity observes that the “General Provisions” of the Civil Code are to be found in Part I, which is then followed by seven parts each addressing a discrete area of the law, of which Part II, “The Law of Property” and Part VI, “Copyright Law” are examples. See First Newcity Decl. ¶ 37; Ex. 3, attached to First Newcity Decl. This, offers Newcity, is an additional reason why these two parts of the code are not directly relevant to one another. See First Newcity Decl. ¶ 37. Professor Newcity goes on to survey scholarly and judicial authority and finds all sources to support the view that the state enterprise responsible for producing a film owns the copyright to that film. Professor Newcity attests to having consulted more than a dozen scholarly books with not one dissenting voice. See id. ¶ 43. For example, copyright expert Eduard P. Gavrilov in his 1984 book Soviet Copyright Law has written: The cases in which an original copyright is owned by a legal entity are established by the legislation of the USSR and the civil codes of the union republics. All-union legislation does not provide for such cases, but the civil code secures, in the first place, to an organization that publishes a scientific collection, encyclopedic dictionary, journal, and other periodic publications, the copyright to that publication as a whole; and in the second place, to an enterprise that shoots a motion picture or television film, and to radio and television organization that transmit radio and television broadcasts, the copyright to the specified works. See id. ¶ 43. Gavrilov’s view is seconded by S.A. Chernysheva in her 1984 book Legal Regulation of Copyright Relations in Cinematography and Television, as well as by Irina Savel’eva in her 1986 text Legal Regulation of Relations in the Field ofArtisitic Creation. See id. ¶ 44. Those who have surveyed the 1928 law reach similar conclusions. Among these experts are B.S. Antimony and E.A. Fleishits who, in their 1957 book, Copyright Laiv, speaking of the 1928 legislation, conclude that “[the law] recognized ... film studios that create films as subjects of copyright.” See id. ¶ 42. V.I. Sere-brovskiy echoes this conclusion in his 1956 book Problems of Soviet Copyright Law, as does Serge L. Levitsky in his 1964 book Introduction to Soviet Copyright Law. See id. Further, Professor Gavrilov has submitted a declaration in this case in which he concludes, in accordance with his view conveyed above, that “the unlimited exclusive copyright, including the right to show the films, was vested in film studio ‘Soyuzmult-film’ ... for all the films under consideration.” Decl. of Eduard P. Gavrilov, Ex. 4, attached to Decl, of Julian Lowenfeld. In addition to Gavrilov, another leading authority on Russian copyright law, Professor Viktor A. Dozortsev has written that “the Studio which filmed the picture is the sole proprietor of the copyright ... that has ... the right to use the work and the entire right to dispose of the work.” Decl. of V.A. Dozortsev, Ex. 10, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld. Svetlana Rozi-na, another expert on Russian copyright law, has also submitted a declaration in agreement with this conclusion. See Decl. of Svetlana Rozina, Ex. 11, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld. Judicial decision, although not entitled to the same weight as similar decisions in common law regimes, as Professor Newcity cautions, have reached identical determinations. Professor Newcity makes mention of the Matveevna v. Krupniy Plan case, in which the court held that “[a]ecording to the Civil Code (Article 486, CC of RSFSR) ... all the proprietary rights belonged to the film studio, which produced the film,” Ex. 8, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowenfeld, and the Sergey-ev case, where the court held that “[a]c-cording to the Article 486 of CC of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federation of 1964, which was in effect during the creation of the films — the author’s right for the film belonged to the organization which shot the films ..., i.e., film studios.” Ex. 9, attached to Decl. of Julian Lowen-feld. The December 26, 2000 remand decision of the Moscow Region Arbitrazh Court in the suit between SMS and FSUESMS, quoted at length above, also held that the copyrights produced by the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio belonged to that state enterprise as per the operations of Article 486. Additional evidence cited by Professor Newcity in support of his argument includes the fact that after 1978, at which time Goskino instituted the requirement that copyright notices be placed on films, the state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm was listed as the copyright proprietor. See First Newcity Decl. ¶ 47. Further, Professor Newcity cites specific circumstances under which the state could become a copyright holder. See id. ¶ 48. These circumstances are limited to: (1) the case where the state uses its right, available both under the 1928 and 1964 law, to purchase compulsorily an author’s copyright; (2) the case where a copyright proprietor specifically designated the state as a successor to the copyright in his or her will; (3) the case where an enterprise owning a copyright is liquidated and the copyright escheats to the state; and finally, (4) the case where the term of copyright on a given work had expired, whereupon the R.S.F.S.R. Council of Ministers could proclaim it to be state property. See id. None of these circumstances obtain here, Professor Newcity notes, and therefore, the copyrights in this case could not have belonged to the state. See id. ¶ 49. Article 498 of the 1964 R.S.F.S.R. Civil Code, which provides that “[a] copyright of an organization is valid permanently. In case of the reorganization of the organization which owns it, the copyright is transferred to its successor in title, and in case of its liquidation, to the state,” Id. ¶ 55, is, according to Professor Newcity, particularly compelling evidence that the copyrights belonged to the state enterprise ab initio, since otherwise there would be no need to include such a provision in the Code, or alternatively, the provision would only apply to non-state enterprises, which its broad language does not indicate. See id. ¶ 51. Finally, Professor Newcity points to legislative action by Russia’s current government that implicitly recognized that state enterprises such as Soyuzmultfilm Studio were indeed copyright holders. See id. ¶ 52. Plaintiffs’ other principal expert, Professor Stephan, elaborates on the nature of this action in detail. In 1998-99, the Russian Duma contemplated a bill that would have, if enacted, asserted government ownership of all copyrights in audiovisual works created before August 2, 1992, aside from those held by individuals, as opposed to organizations. See Decl. of Paul Stephan of January 22, 2001 [hereinafter “Second Stephan Decl.”] ¶ 16. A November 11, 1998 letter from the Russian Federation State Committee on Cinematography (“Roskino”) argued against the adoption of the proposal, observing that “for films made before August 3, 1992,. there exist two kinds of rights: first the state rights, expressed through keeping all the initial stock of films in state archival facilities, and second, exclusive property rights to films (objects of copyrights), which belong to the film studios.” Id. ¶ 16. The letter further argued that the ends of the proposed legislation could only be properly achieved by “a transfer of copyright on a contractual basis, an obligatory condition of which would be the payment of copyright compensation.” Id. The Russian government followed suit, submitting an official response opposing the law to the legislature on April 12, 1999, arguing that copyrighted works created before the enactment of the 1993 Russian Copyright Law had the protection of Russian law and could not be expropriated by the proposed measure, which would have applied to “juridical persons, including those that had been transformed at that time [from state enterprises] into shareholding companies and other organizations.” Id. A similar conclusion was reached by the Duma’s Committee for Cultural Affairs, which concluded that the proposal “in form directed toward taking away the proprietary rights to audio-visual creative work of juridical persons (movie and TV studios), would amount to an expropriation of intellectual property, from their legal rightful owners.” Id. Persuaded by such opinions, the Duma rejected the bilk See id. Professor Stephan also presents some very illuminating background information on the Soviet copyright situation that is helpful in distinguishing the rights of the state enterprise from the rights of the state. According to him, Professor Maggs’ use of the term “operative management” to describe the rights of state enterprises vis-a-vis the works that they had created obscures the debate extending from the 1950s to the 1980s among Soviet legal scholars about what precisely the rights of such enterprises were and should be. See id. ¶ 2. As a threshold matter, there was no dispute that the copyright itself, the underlying right, was held by the state enterprise