Introduction: as is known, there are two key copyright law traditions: Anglo-American and Romano-Germanic copyright laws. At the same time, copyright law of the main representatives of Romano-Germanic tradition is not homogeneous, as it may seem at first glance. French and German copyright law is in the vanguard of the continental copyright law, with the copyright law of Russia being among the others in this copyright law system. However, Russian copyright law has some specific characteristics. The purpose of the present article is to define the structure of copyright systems of France, Germany and Russia. Methods: comparative legal, historic, system structural and formal dogmatic methods are used in the analysis. Results: the article considers the influence of philosophical law theories on copyright systems in France, Germany and Russia. These systems are characterized in terms of correlation between the author’s economic and moral rights. The role of exclusive rights is pointed out in copyright systems of France, Germany and Russia. Conclusions: we believe that Russian copyright system is a special form of the dualistic model. Here the legal status of the author’s moral rights is controversial and uncompleted. In fact, this dualism is eclectic since it is influenced by conceptually different systems of French and Soviet copyrights. We come to the conclusion that the term “exclusive rights” has historical rather than theoretical grounds for statutory reference to copyrights.