articles - Labour and employment law

The image of a natural person is a protected right. In Poland, it is subject to protection as a personal data, right to personality , but is also subject to copyright protection. Each of these regulations has a somewhat different presumption and terms of image use. An employer, in seeking to use the image of an employee in advertising, must ensure to meet requirements imposed by each of these regimes as well as observe requirements specified by all legal provisions applied in this regard. In this article we seek to address questions concerning copyright principles under which an employer...

Employers frequently find no need to include provisions in employment contracts that regulate copyrights to work produced by an employee. They rest on the general principle that the employer automatically acquires economic copyrights to work created in the course of performing assigned tasks1 or that the right to them arises to his benefit by law (as in the case of computer software)2. Therefore, regulations in an employment contract are unnecessary. This is obviously true to a certain degree. The devil nevertheless lies in details. If an employer solely rests on statutory provisions, he may...

Determining whether a work created by an employee is an employee work for copyright purposes has serious practical consequences. The use of the employer’s equipment or materials doesn’t necessarily mean that a work is an employee work. Similarly, the employee’s use of his own equipment or materials doesn’t automatically mean that the work is not an employee work. Warsaw Court of Appeal judgment of 20 June 2018 (case no. I ACa 18/17)