Poland: Act of July 24, 2015, amending the Act on Industrial Property and some other Acts
December 1, 2015
Poland: The Act of July 24, 2015, amending the Act on Industrial Property and some other Acts entered into force on December 1, 2015.
The Act introduces significant changes to the provisions regarding industrial designs, patents and trademarks in the Act of June 30, 2000, on Industrial Property (consolidated version of November 29, 2013) to align the Polish intellectual property law with European regulations and international agreements.
Inter alia, the Act: (i) establishes the international protection for industrial designs in accordance with the Geneva Act (1999) of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs and grants copyright protection to industrial designs even after the expiration of the design rights; (ii) provides patent protection for medicinal products and plant protection products and requires to disclose the industrial application of a sequence or a partial sequence of a gene in the patent application for biotechnological inventions; and (iii) extends the possibility of obtaining a protection for a similar trademark for everyone with the consent of the earlier trademark holders.