| In Principle

The Court of Justice has ruled that under the EU principle of freedom of establishment, transfer of the registered office of a Polish company abroad within the European Economic Area cannot be conditioned on conducting liquidation of the company in Poland.

In common-law jurisdictions, the trust is a popular form for achieving various aims: managing assets, inheritance, building corporate structures, and tax planning. But countries from the Continental legal tradition, like Poland, typically do not have any institution directly corresponding to a trust. Polish doesn’t even have a word for it. This has raised doubts over the years and sometimes even suspicion on the part of courts and lawyers when they need to determine the consequences exerted by a trust in actual or potential disputes in jurisdictions unfamiliar with this form. Are their suspicions well-founded?

What are the possible consequences for failure to comply with these duties, and can the management board assert as a defence that the authority approving the financial reports has failed to reach a decision?

Under a proposed amendment to the Personal Income Tax Act, from 1 January 2018 the compensation of management board members will be taxed at regular rates (18%/32%), whether paid in cash or bonuses in the form of derivatives of financial instruments or other property rights.

The General Data Protection Regulation entering into force on 25 May 2018 is not the only privacy revolution in store for the EU. The proposed ePrivacy Regulation is also generating greater and greater controversy and may change the shape of the internet as we know it.

A year ago we reported that an amendment to the Public Procurement Law required contractors and subcontractors to hire workers under an employment contract if they fell under Art. 22 §1 of the Labour Code. But it was not clear how contracting authorities could check whether contractors were complying with this requirement without infringing the personal data of the contractor’s staff. These doubts have now been resolved in a joint opinion issued by the president of the Public Procurement Office (UZP) and the Inspector General of Personal Data Protection (GIODO).

The advocate general at the Court of Justice has issued his opinion on parallel Schweppes trademarks functioning in different EEA countries and registered for separate proprietors.

Changes to the EU’s trademark regulations entered into force on 1 October 2017, recognising for the first time multimedia marks combining image and sound. They may consist for example of animations launched in mobile devices or apps, jingles from film studios, brief video clips, and so on.

Can the scope of authority of the representative of a foreign undertaking in a Polish branch be limited in practice to comply with the principal’s expectations?

Linie lotnicze często anulują bilet, jeśli podróżny nie stawił się na lot w pierwszą stronę lub na lot na pierwszym odcinku podróży. Czy taka praktyka jest zgodna z prawem?

10 października wystartował blog newtech.law. Znajdą się na nim teksty dotyczące nie tylko prawnych, ale również etycznych, kulturowych i społecznych aspektów nowych technologii.

A new item has been added to the extensive catalogue of the firm’s publications. In our Outlook on law and business in Poland we discuss trends in changes in the law, such as increased regulatory pressure and increased penalisation of commerce. These are illuminated by concrete examples from practice and conclusions concerning the consequences of these phenomena that can be expected to occur or are already happening.