Earlier this month, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland issued a long-awaited judgment on the assessment of constitutionality of Article 79(1)(3)(b) of the Copyright and Related Rights Act (judgment of 5 November 2019, reference no. P 14/19). This provision entitles the entity whose copyright has been infringed to demand from the infringer a…

A word (verbal) sign (trademark) in which neither the choice of words nor their arrangement and connection are a manifestation of a creative invention, and nor are they original or create a result that could be defined as the manifestation of intellectual activity of a person with an autonomous creative value, is not a work…

The Polish government has filed a complaint against the new DSM Directive, and more specifically against its art. 17. While it will be a long time until the CJ EU issues a decision, the complaint makes it likely that the battle for the rules on intermediary liability is not over; it has just been moved…

The Polish Supreme Court held that the creative (original) nature of a work protected by copyright may manifest itself in the creative, new and simplified combination of known elements e.g. insurance products. The condition of individuality of such a work will be met if it is unique from the statistical point of view, meaning that…

Update: The deadline for papers has now been extended to 11 June 2017 Copyright influences everyone’s life. Certainly, it forms the framework for the creation and circulation of culture as each artist has to adjust to copyright when building upon others’ work or when planning to make a living from his or her creativity. But…

Since the information transmitted over the internet is often embodied in copyright works, some right owners consequently claim the right to control or at least to participate in the corresponding revenues. They direct their claims to intermediaries at different layers of the network or directly to users. Intermediaries often invoke legal defences such as the…

The Polish Supreme Court held that the use of elements of a work of authorship, which are widely known and available (in the public domain), in another work in which those elements were combined in a different way, constitutes an expression of individual creative thought, and cannot therefore be regarded as an infringement of copyright…

In determining the amount of remuneration that an author might obtain for the copyright in his photographs, it was necessary to determine the remuneration that he would have received if the person who violated his rights had entered into an agreement with the author concerning the use of the work. Such a determination should be based on the remuneration rates in the…

The Supreme Court held that it is a matter of fact, not law, whether a work created from fragments of another work is a derivative work (according to Article 2 of the Copyright Act) or another kind of non-independently created work. Therefore this type of issue cannot be debated in an action for determining the…

For quite a long time nothing special has been happening in Polish copyright law. Some court decisions here and there (in all fairness unlikely to be called ground-breaking) and some new legislative initiatives (that will be worthy of presenting if eventually passed). However, yesterday (June 23, 2015) the Polish Constitutional Tribunal issued a decision on…