| In Principle

The amendment of the Industrial Property Law entering into force on 15 April 2016 also introduces major changes in regulations governing the loss of the protective rights to trademarks.

Uber has been serving Warsaw since August 2014. With its smartphone app, users can call a car, set the fee in advance, and pay by credit card. Can this be defined as a transport service?

Can a controlled attack on a computer system to identify its security weaknesses violate copyright or trade secrets?

Outsourcing continues to be an appealing solution for businesses. But for it to generate benefits rather than legal problems, a number of issues must be analysed—from the liability rules governing the parties to issues of state aid and data protection.

The Supreme Court of Poland ruled on 17 February 2016 that an entity conducting direct marketing using automated generating systems (in that case SMS ads) is liable for failure to obtain consent from recipients also when it has contracted out the marketing to an external firm.

Work is underway on a General Data Protection Regulation for the EU. The changes expected in the new legislation will be important for outsourcing companies. Among the planned changes, there will be severe sanctions for violation of data protection regulations.

Invalidation of the Safe Harbour decision created a gap in the system for transfer of data from Europe to the US. The question arose of how to evaluate the legality of existing data transfer practices based on Safe Harbour, and what rules to apply in the resulting vacuum.

In today’s knowledge-based economy, consolidations of enterprises are common—sometimes even between competitors. Employment reductions are a natural part of any consolidation, but are a source of legal risks for merging competitors. Such risks are hard to eliminate, but does it have to end in stalemate?

The potential fine for carrying out a concentration without obtaining the required approval of the president of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) is up to 10% of the annual turnover of the enterprise, even if the failure was not wilful. A manager or board member who fails to make a required notification may have to pay as much as PLN 200,000. But what circumstances does the competition authority consider when determining the amount of the fine?

Creation of a joint venture by competitors, or obtaining joint control over a competing company through acquisition of its shares, may give rise to significant antitrust risks. Obtaining approval for the transaction from the competition authority may not ensure legal safety when competitors intend to pursue joint business initiatives.

In the EU system of antitrust law, the European Commission and the member states are autonomous in their application of leniency programmes. The soft harmonisation via the European Competition Network’s Model Leniency Programme is not binding on national competition authorities.

Many contractors, including those involved in public projects carried out under the Public Procurement Law, lose sleep over the theoretically harmless instrument provided for in Civil Code Art. 483 and 484. Contractual penalties are reserved for all manner of breaches of contract and in huge amounts. The time has to come to change that.