POLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Agnieszka Janicka and Krzysztof Hajdamowicz, Clifford Chance
7.3 Industrial Designs Industrial design is a new and original appearance of a product, or part thereof, resulting from the features of the lines, contours, shape, colours, texture and/ or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamen - tation. The right conferred by the registration of an industrial design is granted for 25 years, divided into five-year periods. To register an industrial design, an application contain - ing an illustration of the industrial design must be filed with the Patent Office. If the industrial design meets the statutory requirements for granting protection, the Patent Office issues a decision granting protection. Claims concerning an infringement of a right con - ferred by registration of an industrial design are heard before a court in civil proceedings. The remedies are the same as in the case of an infringement of a patent. 7.4 Copyright Copyright protects any manifestation of human crea - tive activity of an individual nature in any form, regard - less of its value, purpose or manner of expression. Copyright consists of economic rights and moral rights. Economic rights entitle the copyright holder to use and dispose of a work and receive fair and appropriate remuneration for the use of it, and these rights may be transferred or assigned. Along with the economic rights, there is also the exclusive right of the author to authorise the use of derivative rights to the original work (eg, translation). Moral rights entitle the author to sign the work with their name, decide on its first publication and allow modification thereof. Moral rights cannot be trans - ferred, assigned or licensed, but it is common practice to oblige the author in contracts transferring economic copyrights not to exercise the moral rights. Econom - ic rights are generally protected until 70 years after the death of the author of the work; moral rights last indefinitely. Economic rights may be transferred (or licensed) only within the fields of exploitation explicitly specified in an agreement. A field of exploitation means any man - ner of exploitation considered technically and eco -
nomically independent in trading practice. Omitting a field of exploitation in the agreement deprives the acquirer (or licensee) of the rights to exploit a field not listed therein. The fields of exploitation make it pos - sible to seek remuneration for each of them. Copyright protection does not depend upon a regis - tration process or satisfaction of any formal require - ments. Once the work is established (even if not com - pleted), it automatically receives protection. In the event of an infringement of economic rights, the author may demand cessation of the infringe - ment, remedy of the results of the infringement, dam - age compensation and the surrender of any unlawfully obtained benefit. The author may also request publi - cation of an announcement in the press or payment of an appropriate sum of money to the copyright holder, determined at twice the amount of remuneration that would be required for a licence to use the work. 7.5 Others Software and Databases There is no special regime for the protection of soft - ware, which is primarily protected under copyright law (with certain specific provisions applicable to com - puter programs), with minor differences compared to the works described in 7.4 Copyright . Databases that are collected in a way that requires substantial investment of effort to compile, verify or present their content, in terms of quality or quantity, are protected by the Act on the Protection of Databas - es. Such protection does not depend on registration and lasts for 15 years. Regardless, databases may be protected by copyright if they can be considered a “work”. Business Secrets Business secrets are protected under the Polish Act on Combatting Unfair Competition, and may be vio - lated if unlawfully disclosed, used or obtained. In the violation of a business secret, the entrepreneur may demand: • cessation of the violation; • removal of the effects of the violation; • a relevant statement;
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