POLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Łukasz Klimczyk, Maciej Skrzypek, Beata Danel-Skrzypek and Piotr Klepuszewski, SLK Partners
grant equivalent rights to the Polish Olympic Com - mittee. These rights may be commercially exploited in accordance with federation or Olympic regulations. This mechanism centralises certain marketing rights connected with national representation while leaving athletes free to commercially exploit their image out - side the context of national team participation. 5.4 Protecting Personality/Image Rights The Polish legal system does not recognise the doc - trines of customary law as understood in common law. However, their functional equivalents exist in statutory provisions and are widely used in practice, especially in sports. This applies in particular to the protection of athletes against unauthorised commercial use of their images. In Polish law, protection corresponding to common law doctrines stems mainly from: • provisions on personal rights (Civil Code) or image protection under the IP Rights Act; • image rights as personal data; • provisions on combating unfair competition; and • regulations on trade mark registration, in particular the Act of 30 June 2000 on Industrial Property Law. The protection of athletes’ image is based primarily on regulations concerning personal rights, image rights, and combating unfair competition, which effectively prevent impersonation and unauthorised commercial use of athletes’ identities by third parties. In practice, athletes often also strengthen protection by registering their name or nickname as a trade mark or protecting their personal logo and branding ele - ments (as discussed in relation to Robert Lewandows - ki and Iga Świątek in 5.1 Trade Marks ). This allows them to act on the basis of industrial property law, similar to common law systems. 5.5 Licensing Sports bodies/teams/athletes can commercially exploit their intellectual property primarily through licensing agreements. This applies to industrial prop - erty rights, copyrights, and image rights.
Professional sports entities primarily license: • trade marks and branding – including club names, crests, league and federation logos, and team markings; • rights to broadcast sporting events, rights to rebroadcast and highlight reels, and rights to digital content; • image rights of athletes – athletes may (i) indepen - dently grant licences for the use of their image, (ii) transfer rights to clubs in contracts, (iii) enter into individual sponsorship agreements; and • IP rights – video materials, photographs, graphics, and promotional content. Licensing is the primary mechanism for the commer - cial use of intellectual property in sport. In professional sport, it covers a wide range of rights, in particular trade mark rights, rights to broadcast sporting events, and athletes’ image rights. In amateur and academ - ic sport, it is usually more limited in scope, local in In Poland, the transfer of intellectual property rights to third parties is generally permissible, but is subject to significant statutory restrictions, which vary depend - ing on the type of right. The most important of these are the non-transfera - bility of moral rights and image rights, formal require - ments for the transfer of economic copyrights, and registration obligations when transferring industrial property rights. 5.7 Data in Sport Sports data plays an increasingly important role in sports management, media, marketing and sports technology, generating significant commercial value through licensing, analytical services and data-driven business models. nature, and sponsorship based. 5.6 Assignment of IP Rights The commercial use of sports data is subject to sev - eral legal constraints, including personal data protec - tion under the GDPR, image rights, database rights and the regulatory frameworks of sports federations. Certain categories of data, particularly athletes’ bio -
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