A preliminary question from the Polish Supreme Court to the CJEU (case C-367/15)

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The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Poland referred its second preliminary question to the CJEU (following a previous one reported previously on Polish Private Law). This time it addressed issues of intellectual property protection, against the background of the 2004/48/EC directive of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The Court confronted this act with the domestic remedies in the case of copyright infringements, concluding that the possibility to award damages without ascertaining the real amount of loss, as set forth in the Polish regulation, is not compliant with the EU rules, excluding penal measures in these terms.

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Posted on 29/09/2015 by Mateusz Grochowski in General Issues, IP Law

Rights to a bus and the beginning of the end of formalised copyright transfer

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Copyright transfer, as regulated in Articles 41-68 of the Polish Act on Copyrights and Related Rights of 9 February 1994 (Polish Journal of Laws 2006.90.631 – hereinafter referred to as “Copyright Act”) is extremely strict and formalised. Current regulations are designed to protect the creator against business and the media industry, which are considered as the stronger party in copyright transfer relations. Any transfer must have specified fields of exploitation or will be declared invalid. Moreover, any inaccuracies have to be resolved in favour of the creator.

There is also an obligation to use a specific expression of intent to transfer copyrights. If not, according to Article 65 of the Copyright Act, there is a presumption that a given agreement is actually a licence agreement signed for a defined period of five years. So far, Polish jurisprudence has maintained that these regulations are unconditional, though a recent Supreme Court judgment of from 15 November 2012 (V CSK 545/11) stated that in some circumstances the strict rules of copyright transfer can be alleviated. Read more

Posted on 18/05/2014 by Jan Wosiura in IP Law