The recent introduction of a legal mechanism for open licenses to Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation is currently the most discussed issue in the field of intellectual property. In this paper, the authors analyze the history, concept and legal nature of free licenses, which means the practice of allowing the public to use the finished product of a certain author/owner on the basis of a simple agreement (often concluded in electronic form), also known as Creative Commons. As a rule, this concept applies to works distributed on and via the Internet. The new regulations on free licenses in Russia had been highly anticipated by the legal and digital community in view of a previous lack of proper legal regulation in this sphere. The authors analyze the rules imposed by the new articles of Part IV of the Civil Code (Article 1286.1) dedicated to free licenses, and draw the attention to various aspects and challenges of enforcement of this legal instrument.