O.A.Gorodov, Doctor of Law, Professor of Saint Petersburg State University (Saint Petersburg, gorodovoleg@gmail.com), analyzes in this article the problem of the dependence of the objects of patent rights on each other, which is multidimensional in nature and has existed in legal science for a long time. The article poses this problem from the position of the legal significance of various types of dependence and their author's interpretation in the framework of the current legislation of the Russian Federation on intellectual property.