ACT
of 4 February 1994
ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS1
(Consolidated text)
Chapter 1. The Object of Copyright Article 1. 1. The object of copyright shall be any manifestation of creative activity of individual nature, established in any form, irrespective of its value, purpose or form of expression (work). 2. In particular, the object of copyright shall include: |
1) | works expressed in words, mathematical symbols, graphic signs (literary, journalistic, scientific and |
| cartographic works and computer programs); |
2) | artistic works; |
3) | photographic works; |
4) | string musical instruments; |
5) | industrial design works; |
6) | architectural works, architectural and urban planning works as well as urban planning works; |
7) | musical works as well as musical and lyrical works; |
8) | theatrical works, theatrical and musical works as well as choreographic and pantomime works; |
9) | audiovisual (including film) works. |
| 2(1). Protection may apply to the form of expression only and | no | protection shall be granted to |
discoveries, ideas, procedures, methods and principles of operation as well as mathematical concepts.
3. The work shall be in copyright since being established, even though its form is incomplete.
4. The author shall be granted copyright protection regardless of whether the formalities have been complied with or not.
Article 2. 1. The work derived from another author's work, in particular its translation, modification or adaptation, shall be copyrighted without detriment to the original work. - The disposal and use of the derivative work shall be dependent on permission of the author of the original work (derivative copyright) unless the author's economic rights to the original work have expired. The author's permission shall also be required for preparing the derivative work in the case of data bases showing the features of a piece of work.
- The author of the original work may withdraw his/her permission if the derivative work has not been disseminated within five years from the date of granting such permission. The remuneration paid to the author is not be refundable.
- The work produced under the inspiration of another author's work shall not be considered as the derivative work.
5. The copies of the derivative work shall indicate the author and the title of the original work.
Article 3. Collections, anthologies, selections, and data bases showing the features of a piece of work shall be copyrighted even if they contain unprotected materials in so far as the nature of their order, arrangement or composition is creative without detriment to the rights of the works used .
Article 4. The copyright shall not apply to: Article 5. The provisions of this Act shall apply to works: 1) | legislative acts and their official drafts; |
2) | official documents, materials, logos and symbols; |
3) | published patent specifications and industrial design specifications; |
4) | simple press information. |
1) whose author or coauthor is a Polish citizen; or
11) whose author is a citizen of the European Union Member State or Member States of the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) -parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area; or
2) which have been published for the first time on the territory of the Republic of Poland or simultaneously on this territory and abroad; or
3) which have been published for the first time in the Polish language; or
4) which are protected under international agreements within the scope of protection provided therein.
Article 6. 1. Pursuant to this Act: 1) published work shall mean a piece of work which has been reproduced and its copies have been made available to the public by its author's permission; 2) simultaneous publication shall mean publication of a piece work on the territory of the Republic of Poland and abroad within the period of 30 days from the date of its first publication; 3) disseminated work shall mean a piece of work which has been made available to the public in any way by its author's permission; 4) broadcast of a piece of work shall mean its dissemination by radio or television transmission through wireless networks (terrestrial or satellite) or cable networks;
5) rebroadcast of a piece of work shall mean its dissemination by an operator other than the original broadcaster in the form of taking over the entire and unchanged programme of a radio or television broadcasting organization and transmitting it for general reception simultaneously and integrally;
6) marketing of, it means making its original or copies available to the public through transfer of their ownership by a rightholder or with consent of the rightholder;
7) rental of copies of a piece of work, means their transfer for use limited in time with the objective of generating direct or indirect material benefit;
8) lending for use of copies of a piece of work, it means delivery thereof for use limited in time without the objective of generating direct or indirect material benefit;
9) presentation of a piece of work, it means providing access thereto either through sound, vision or sound and vision carriers on which the work has been recorded, or through equipment used for reception of radio or television programme on which the work is being broadcast;
10) technological protection measures shall be any and all technology, equipment or elements thereof intended to prevent or to restrict any actions permitting the use of works or artistic performances in breach of law;
11) effective technological protection measures shall be the technological protection measures which allow subjects holding rights to control the use of a protected work or an artistic performance through the application of an access code or a protection mechanism, in particular encryption, scrambling or any other transformation of a piece of work or an artistic performance or a reproduction inspection mechanism which serve the protection objective;
12) information on management of rights shall be information providing identification of the work, the author, the owner of the copyright or information on the conditions of exploitation of a piece of work, provided that they have been attached to the copy of the work or are delivered in relation to dissemination thereof, including identification codes.
2. Whenever this Act mentions an equivalent of a given amount denominated in euro it shall mean its equivalent denominated in the Polish currency, calculated at the average euro exchange rate or its equivalent denominated in other currency, calculated at the average euro exchange rate and the average exchange rate of such other currency announced by the National Bank of Poland on the day preceding the performance of this act.
Article 61. 1. Dissemination of a piece of work on the territory of the Republic of Poland through satellite radio or television transmission means dissemination of such work by the act of introducing, under the responsibility of the radio or television broadcasting organization, on the territory of the Republic of Poland, the work into a chain of communication leading to the satellite and back down to Earth.
2. If dissemination of any work through satellite radio or television transmission occurs in any nonmember country of the European Union which does not ensure the level of protection defined in Chapter II of the Council Directive 93/83/EEC of 27 September 1993 on the coordination of certain rules concerning copyright and rights related to copyright applicable to satellite broadcast and cable rebroadcast (Official Journal of the European Union, Special Polish Edition, Chapter 17, Vol. 1, p. 134), and if: 1) | the work-carrying signal is transmitted | to | the satellite through | an | uplink station situated | on | the |
| territory of the Republic of Poland, it is believed that such work has been disseminated on the territory |
| of the Republic of Poland by the operator of that station; |
2) | the work-carrying signal is transmitted | to | the satellite through | an | uplink station situated | on | the |
| territory | of | a | non-Member | State | of | the | European | Union | and | the | work | is | disseminated | on | the |
| commission of a radio or television organization having its seat in one of the European Union Member |
| States and the main enterprise on the territory of the Republic of Poland, it is believed that the work |
| has been disseminated on the territory of the Republic of Poland by such organization. |
| 3. If the work-carrying signal is encrypted to prevent the common and unlimited reception thereof, it |
shall be considered as dissemination pursuant to paragraph 1 provided that the means for receiving the signal are provided by the radio or television broadcasting organization or with its consent.
4. A satellite shall be any artificial Earth satellite operating within the frequency bands which pursuant to the Act of 16 July 2004 -the Telecommunications Law (Dz.U. 2004, No. 17, item 1800, as amended) are reserved for the broadcast of signals for reception by the public or which are reserved for closed point-to-point communication, provided that in both those cases the reception of signals must occur in comparable conditions.
Article 7. Should the international agreements, to which the Republic of Poland is a party, provide for broader protection than envisaged by this Act for unpublished works of Polish citizens or for works published for the first time on the territory of the Republic of Poland or simultaneously on the territory of the Republic of Poland, or for works published for the first time in Polish, the provisions of such agreements shall apply.
Chapter 2.
Owner of the Copyright
Article 8. 1. The owner of the copyright shall be the author unless this Act states otherwise. - It shall be presumed that the author is the person whose name has been indicated as the author on copies of the work or whose authorship has been announced to the public in any other manner in connection with the dissemination of the work.
- In order to exercise his/her copyright the author, as long as he/she does not disclose his/her authorship, shall be represented by the producer or the publisher and in the absence thereof -by the competent collective management organization.
Article 9. 1. The co-authors shall enjoy copyright jointly. It shall be presumed that the amounts of shares are equal. Each of the co-authors may claim the amounts of shares to be determined by the court on the basis of his/her contribution of creative work. - Each of the co-authors may exercise his/her copyright with respect to his/her autonomous part of the work without detriment to the other co-authors.
- The consent of all co-authors shall be required in order to exercise copyright with respect to the whole work. In the event of absence of such consent, each of the co-authors may request a court decision which shall take into account the interests of all the co-authors in its decision.
- Each of the co-authors may lay claims for infringement of copyright with respect to the whole work. All co-authors shall have the right to compensation received in proportion to their shares.
- Economic rights of co-authors shall be regulated by the respective provisions of the Civil Code on the co-ownership of fractional parts.
Article 10. If authors have combined their separate works in order to disseminate them jointly, each of them may request from the other authors their permissions for the dissemination of the so created whole, unless there are reasonable grounds for withholding such permissions and the contract does not state otherwise. Provisions of Article 9(2)-(4) above shall apply accordingly.
Article 11. The producer or publisher shall have the author's economic rights in a collective work and in particular the rights in encyclopedias or periodical publications, and the authors shall have economic rights in their specific parts which may exist independently. It shall be presumed that the producer or publisher have the right to the title.
Article 12. 1. Unless this Act or a contract of employment states otherwise, the employer, whose employee has created a piece of work within the scope of his/her duties resulting from the employment relationship, shall, upon acceptance of the work, acquire the author's economic rights within the limits resulting from the purpose of the employment contract and the congruent intention of the parties. - If, within two years from accepting the work, the employer does not start the dissemination of the work to be disseminated under such contract of employment, the author may fix in writing a time limit for the employer to disseminate the work with the effect that upon its expiry, the rights acquired by the employer together with the ownership of the object in which the work has been fixed shall return to the author, unless the contract states otherwise. The parties may agree upon another time limit for starting the dissemination of the work.
- Unless the contract of employment states otherwise, upon the acceptance of the work, the employer shall acquire the ownership of the object in which the work has been fixed.
Article 13. If, within six months from delivery of the work, the employer fails to notify the author of its rejecting or conditioning the acceptance upon making specific changes within an appropriate time for making such changes, it shall be considered that the work has been accepted without objections. The parties may agree on a different time limit.
Article 14. 1. Unless the contract of employment states otherwise, the research institutions shall have the priority in publishing a scientific work when its employee created such work as a result of performing his/her duties under the employment relationship. The author shall have the right to remuneration. The priority of publication shall expire if within six months from the date of delivery of the work no publication contract has been made with the author or if, within two years from the date of its acceptance, the work has not been published.
2. The research institution may, without separate remuneration, use the scientific materials included in the work specified in paragraph 1 and may make the work accessible to the third parties if it results from the agreed designation of the work or has been provided for in the contract.
Article 15. It shall be presumed that the producer or publisher is the person whose surname or business name has been shown as such on the objects in which the work has been fixed or whose name or business name has been disclosed to the public in any other manner in connection with the dissemination of the work.
Article 15a. A higher education institution pursuant to the regulations on higher education, shall enjoy the right of priority to publish a diploma work of its student. If the higher education institution has not published the diploma work within six months from the defense, the student who wrote such work may publish it unless it is a part of collective work.
Chapter 3.
The Content of Copyright
Division 1.
Author's Moral Rights
Article 16. Unless this Act stipulates otherwise, the moral rights shall protect the link between the author and his/her work which is unlimited in time and independent of any waiver or transfer, and, in particular, the right: 1) to be an author of the work; 2) to sign the work with the author's name or pseudonym, or to make it available to the public
anonymously; 3) to have the contents and form of the author's work inviolable and properly used; 4) to decide on making the work available to the public for the first time; 5) to control the manner of using the work.
Division 2. Author's
Economic Rights
Article 17. Unless this Act stipulates otherwise, the author shall have an exclusive right to use the work and to manage its use throughout all the fields of exploitation and to receive remuneration for the use of the work.
Article 171. Preparing a derivative work or reproducing a data base possessing the features of a piece of work by a legal user of the data base or a copy thereof shall not require permission of the author of the data base if it is required for access to the contents of the data base and for normal use of its contents. If the user is authorized to use only a part of the data base, this provision shall apply only to this part.
Article 18. 1. The author's economic rights shall not be subject to execution as long as they serve the author. The above shall not apply to receivables due. - After the author's death his/her heirs may object to the execution of an unpublished work under copyright unless the objection contradicts the expressed wish of the author as to the dissemination of the work.
- The right to remuneration referred to in Articles 19(1), 191, 20(2)-(4), 201, 30(2) and 70(3) cannot be waived, transferred or executed. The above shall not apply to receivables due.
Article 19. 1. The author and his/her heirs, in the case of professionally performed resale of original copies of the artistic or photographic work, shall have the right to remuneration being the sum total of the rates below: 1) 5% of a part of the selling price, if this part is included in the range up to the equivalent of
EUR 50,000; and 2) 3% of a part of the selling price, if this part is included in the range from the equivalent of EUR 50,000.01 to the equivalent of EUR 200,000 ; and 3) 1% of a part of the selling price, if this part is included in the range from the equivalent of EUR 200,000.01 to the equivalent of EUR 350,000 ; and 4) 0.5% of a part of the selling price, if this part is included in the range from the equivalent of EUR 350,000.01 to the equivalent of EUR 500,000 ; and 5) 0.25% of a part of the selling price, if this part is included in the range exceeding the equivalent of EUR 500,000 -the remuneration being not higher, however, than the equivalent of EUR 12,500. 2.The provision of paragraph 1 shall not apply in the case of the selling price lower than the equivalent of EUR 100.
3.Pursuant to paragraph 1, original copies of a piece of work shall include: 1) the copies performed personally by the author; 2) the copies considered original copies of the work, if they were performed personally, in a limited
number, by the author or under his/her supervision, numbered, signed or otherwise designated by him/her.
Article 191. The author and his/her heirs shall have the right to remuneration in the amount of 5% of the price of professionally performed resale of manuscripts of literary and musical works.
Article 192. 1. Pursuant to Article 19(1) and Article 191, the resale shall mean any sale effected after the first disposal of the work by the author.
2. The professional resale pursuant to of Article 19(1) and Article 191 shall mean any acts having the nature of resale performed, as a part of the activity carried on, by sellers, buyers, intermediaries, and other subjects professionally dealing with trading in works of art or manuscripts of literary and musical works.
Article 193. 1. The seller referred to in Article 192(2) shall be liable to pay the remuneration referred to in Article 19(1) and Article 191, and when he/she acts on behalf of a third party professionally dealing with trading in works of art or manuscripts of literary and musical works, he shall be jointly and severally liable with him/her. - The seller shall be obliged to disclose the third person specified in paragraph 1 above. He/she may be released from such duty through payment of the due remuneration.
- The author of the work referred to in Article 19(1) and Article 191 and his/her heirs may demand that the persons mentioned in paragraph 1 provide the information and render available the documents necessary to determine due remuneration for the resale of an original copy or manuscript of a piece of work for the period of 3 years of the day of performing the resale.
Article 194. The selling prices specified in Article 19(1) and Article 191 shall mean the prices net of the output goods and services tax due in respect of the performed resale of an original copy or manuscript of a piece of work.
Article 195. The provisions of Articles 19 to 194 shall also apply to original copies and manuscripts of works other than those listed in Article 5, whose authors have a place of permanent stay on the territory of the Republic of Poland on the date of performing the resale.
Article 20. 1. Producers and importers: 1) of tape recorders, video recorders and other similar devices; 2) of photocopiers, scanners and other similar reprographic devices which allow to make copies of all or
a part of a published work; 3) of blank carriers used for fixing, within the scope of personal use, works or objects of related rights, with the help of the devices listed in subparagraphs 1 and 2 -shall be obliged to pay to collective management organizations specified in paragraph 5 which act to the benefit of artists, artistic performers, producers of phonograms and videograms, and publishers, fees at not more than 3% of the amount due from the sale of those devices and carriers. - The amount received in the form of fees from the sale of tape recorders and other similar devices as well as blank carriers related thereto, shall be distributed as follows: 1) 50% -to artists; 2) 25% -to artistic performers; 3) 25% -to producers of phonograms.
- The amount received in the form of fees from the sale of video recorders and other similar devices as well as blank carriers related thereto, shall be distributed as follows: 1) 35% -to artists; 2) 25% -to artistic performers; 3) 40% -to producers of videograms.
- The amount received in the form of fees from the sale of reprographic devices as well as blank carriers related thereto, shall be distributed as follows: 1) 50% -to artists; 2) 50% -to publishers.
- The Minister competent for culture and protection of the national heritage, having consulted collective management organizations, associations of authors, artistic performers, organizations of producers of phonograms, producers of videograms and publishers as well as organizations of producers or importers of the devices and blank carriers listed in paragraph 1, shall define, by way of a regulation: categories of devices and carriers as well as the fees referred to in paragraph 1, on the basis of the capacity of a device and carrier to reproduce works, and the designed use thereof for functions other than reproduction of works, the manner of collection and distribution of the fees as well as the collective management organizations authorized to collect such fees.
Article 201. 1. Any person who is in possession of any reprographic devices and conducts economic activities within the scope of reproduction of works for the personal use of third parties, shall be obliged to pay, through a collective management organization, fees at up to 3% of proceeds generated from such activities, to authors and publishers, unless the reproduction is done on the basis of a contract signed with a rightholder. Such fees shall be paid to authors and publishers in equal parts.
2. The Minister competent for culture and protection of the national heritage, having consulted collective management organizations, associations of authors and publishers as well a respective chamber of commerce, shall define, by way of a regulation, the fees referred to in paragraph 1, taking into account the share of works reproduced for personal use in all of the reproduced materials, the manner of collection and distribution of the fees as well as designate the organization or collective management organizations authorized to collect such fees.
Article 21. 1. Radio and television broadcasting organizations may broadcast minor musical works, minor lyrical works as well as musical and lyrical works exclusively on the basis of the contract signed with the collective management organization, unless the radio or television broadcasting organization is entitled to broadcast works commissioned thereby on the basis of a separate contract.
2. An author may waive, in a contract concluded with a radio or television broadcasting organization, the agency of the collective management organizations management referred to in paragraph 1. The waiver must be in writing, otherwise being null and void.
21. Provisions of paragraphs 1 and 2 shall respectively apply to making works available to the public in a manner permitting everyone to access it at a place and in time selected thereby. - Repealed.
- Repealed.
Article 211.