The Right to a Firm in the Legal Doctrine and Judicial Practice of the Russian Empire
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46282/blr.2025.9.2.1121Keywords:
Right to a Firm, Commercial Name, Corporate Law, Competition lawAbstract
The article examines scientific, theoretical and practical approaches to the issue of the right to a firm in the law of the Russian Empire in the period from the 1880s to 1917. In pre-revolutionary law, doctrine and practice, the right to a firm was understood as the right of a merchant or industrialist to carry out entrepreneurial activity under a certain designation, called in commercial life “firm”. Both legal science and then judicial practice understood a firm as a trade (commercial) name. Unlike many Western countries, as well as the Far East (e.g., Japan), this concept was never codified, although such attempts were repeatedly made. The authors conclude that the doctrine that emerged during this period of time significantly outpaced the adoption of relevant legislation, and sometimes even the judicial practice. The treatises of such researchers as A. Bashilov (1887), G. Shershenevich (1888), A. Hol’msten (1895), Vs. Udintsev (1907), A. Fyodorov (1911), A. Kaminka (1912), and others were used as an analysis of the doctrine; the authors also conducted an analysis of a number of judgments of the 4th (later the Judicial department) of the Governing Senate on the issue of the right to a firm, as well as the judgments of some courts of the European states.
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