The authors conclude that the Russian legislation is in a situation where the legislator, when speaking about the transfer of rights, does not disclose the mechanism of such transfer. As a result, there appears to be a legal vacuum filled with judicial practice, which is not uniform. The same is true for the transfer of rights to use subsoil resources. To clarify the legal nature of this transfer, the authors first analyse the legal nature of the right to use subsoil itself to conclude that it is a public-law property right. Further, the authors pay attention to the fact that the Law on Subsoil distinguishes between the concepts of “transfer of the right of subsoil use” and “reissue of the license”, and confirm the conclusion about the public-law nature of the reissue of licenses and the civil-law nature of the transfer of the right of subsoil use.