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On September 14-16 2022 we have launched CEE Legal HUB BootCamp 2022 that took place at the Google Campus for Startups in Warsaw.

Google Legal HUB is a cross-border project that has now been held for seven years. Under the project, Traple Konarski Podrecki & Partners coordinates ongoing legal services for clients, based on a long-term partnership with the top independent CEE law firms.

Together, we will be examining many topics in discussion panels and workshops, including:

• Regulatory aspects of Google’s operations, the forthcoming regulations, and how we will deal with them (Arnd Haller, Northern and Central Europe Legal Director)
• The main procedural challenges in our region (Ian Burton, Senior International Litigation Counsel)
• Relationships with law enforcement agencies and data disclosure policy (Kate McCormack, Google Associate Security Counsel)
• An update on how the cloud computing sector in the CEE region is managing, and our strategic goals (Magda Dziewguc)

We will also be hosting our colleagues from Ukraine, who will share with us their experiences over the last six months – we will attempt to gain a better understanding of what life is like in Ukraine today, the daily challenges, what Google is doing in Ukraine, what the legal challenges are, and what we can do to help.

We would like to express our gratitude to all of the partner firms and guests for coming and playing a part in creating this very special event!

We are very proud to be once again recognized by IP Stars and ranked among the best firms providing services in the field of trademark contentious (tier 2), patent contentious (Tier 2), trade mark prosecution (Tier 3) and copyright & related rights (Tier 3).

Congratulations to our recommended lawyers in Trade Mark Star category: Prof. INP PAN dr hab. Paweł Podrecki and Tomasz Targosz.

Our sincere congratulations to T-Mobile Polska for the launch of their new telecommunications service range. T-Mobile Polska will provide an online television streaming service with 130 channels. This is an innovative project, as the standard IPTV model will be enhanced by OTT.

The TKP Media Communication & Entertainment team was pleased to have the opportunity to advise T-Mobile Polska on the process of phasing in the TV streaming service. We assisted T-Mobile Polska in negotiations with broadcasters of TV channels and streaming platform providers in order to acquire the necessary intellectual property rights.

The TKP team was headed by Arkadiusz Baran, and Dr Piotr Wasilewski, Małgorzata Soppa-Garstecka, and Bartłomiej Łącki also worked on the project.

Our heartfelt thanks to the entire T-Mobile Polska team, who were such a pleasure to work with.

We are proud and delighted to announce that ten people at TKP have been promoted to Managing Associate and Counsel.

The following have been promoted to Managing Associate:

• Anna Jelińska-Sabatowska
• Karol Juraszczyk
• Małgorzata Kutaj
• Piotr Nepelski
• Dominika Nowak
• Marcin Ręgorowicz
• Maciej Toroń

The following have been promoted to Counsel:

• Arkadiusz Baran
• Dr Zbigniew Pinkalski
• Katarzyna Syska

 Sincere congratulations! We wish you every success in your new roles!

Today UOKiK announced that the President of UOKiK has issued six decisions fining influencers for not cooperating in an ongoing investigation. The fines do not concern crypto advertising.  

In total, the fines come to PLN 139 000.  

In autumn 2021, the President of UOKiK launched an investigation to examine the influencer market and the issue of influencers identifying content on social media. The investigation is also intended to help to draw up recommendations on how to identify content on social media as advertising. UOKiK is working on the recommendations jointly with industry organizations and marketing agencies. 

During the investigation, UOKiK looked at influencer profiles, their contracts, and their arrangements with advertisers. Sometimes the author is at fault for inadequately identifying sponsored posts, while at other times, a failure to indicate a commercial relationship may be due to the agreement concluded with an advertiser. To determine the cause of irregularities, influencers were required to send specific documents to UOKiK, or provide responses to questions posed by the regulator. Some influencers did not comply with the requirement to submit documentation, did not respond to questions, or did not collect correspondence.  

Failure to cooperate with UOKiK in an investigation can lead to a fine as high as EUR 50 m.  
The decisions are not final, and influencers may appeal them in court.  

TKP was named a leader three times and was given eleven individual and team recommendations in the 20th Rzeczpospolita ranking of law firms.

We are honored to have been named leaders once again in the fields of Intellectual and industrial property law and copyright and related rights.

Dr. Paweł Podrecki, Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (INP PAN), was once again named the leader in intellectual and industrial property law and was recommended in the copyright and related rights category.

In addition, as a team, we were recommended in five categories:

• Cybersecurity
• Fintech
• Media and telecommunications
• New technologies, IT
• Data protection

While the recommended lawyers were:

• Xawery Konarski (cybersecurity, media and telecommunications, new technologies and IT, and intellectual and industrial property law)
• Dr. Jan Byrski, Professor at the Cracow University of Economics (Fintech).

We are very glad to have been given these distinctions by the judges. Sincere congratulations to all the firms and lawyers who were recommended. 

The full results of the ranking can be found here: https://rankingkancelarii.rp.pl/

The long-awaited bill amending the Act on Copyright and Related Rights has been published on the Government Legislation Centre website.  

The bill is intended to implement two directives,  

• Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC, and  
• Directive (EU) 2019/789 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 laying down rules on the exercise of copyright and related rights applicable to certain online transmissions of broadcasting organisations and retransmissions of television and radio programmes, and amending Council Directive 93/83/EEC.  

Details will be provided shortly!   

Link do bill.

We are delighted to extend a warm welcome to attend the I National Copyright Conference in memory of Professor Elżbieta Traple organized by TKP and under the auspices of the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration at the Jagiellonian University. We dedicate the event to the academic achievements of Professor Elżbieta Traple.

The conference is intended to promote information about a subject dear to Professor Traple, copyright. This year we will be focusing on managing agreements in intellectual property right transactions. At the conference, speakers representing the most important scholarly institutions and who are recognized experts in the field of copyright will share their know-how and thoughts.

The conference will also include a prize-giving ceremony for the best master’s and PhD thesis on copyright and related rights.

We will be glad to see you in Kraków, where Professor Traple spent most of her working life, teaching successive generations of lawyers at the Jagiellonian University. Also for this reason, the conference will be held in the university buildings, at the Didactic Centre of the Faculty of Law and Administration at the Jagiellonian University, ul. Krupnicza 33a, on 29 September 2022.

We would be delighted if you could join us. Please confirm that you will be attending by filling in the online form.

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In compliance with a statutory duty, the National Broadcasting Council has released a report on its activities for 2021.  

• The National Broadcasting Council Report on Activities for 2021 and related Fundamental Radio and Television Issues in 2021 are a major source of information about the most important tendencies and processes emerging on the audiovisual media market in Poland. 
• Among the issues addressed in the report is the extent of observance of the #mustcarry / #mustoffer rule. According to this rule, an operator that distributes television channels must include the channels TVP1, TVP2, TVP3, Polsat, TVN, TV4, and TVPuls in the range offered. The broadcasters of these channels may not withhold the signal or expect remuneration of any kind in return for providing them.  

The principal findings regarding observance of the MCMO rule are as follows: 

• Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 establishing the European Electronic Communications Code is still to be transposed. 
• The National Broadcasting Council is proposing requiring an operator that distributes the channels to provide all television channels disseminated digitally in the form of terrestrial broadcast in nationwide multiplexes. Currently, this obligation applies to seven channels. 
• The view of the National Broadcasting Council is that the mustcarry / mustoffer rule should also entail a #findability rule, i.e. “that a channel is findable due to being appropriately displayed in an electronic program guide (EPG) and using website search systems”.  
• Broadcasters that have a mustoffer obligation but do not give access to channels to operators that distribute channels through OTT or streaming are in breach of a statutory obligation. 
• Copyright must be exercised in a manner compatible with the MCMO rule. 
• MCMO channels must be available in every package that an operator has on offer. They do not have to be included in more expensive packages or premium thematic packages. 
• Placement of a broadcaster’s advertisement in #DAI technology cannot be a condition for a broadcaster to consent to distribution of a MCMO channel. 
• It is not possible, under the Act on Radio and Television Broadcasting, to make a broadcaster’s consent to distribution of a channel conditional on an operator’s use of the broadcaster’s content delivery network (CDN). 

“Due to the tendency to concentrate, for instance by combining the functions of operator and broadcaster, a large number of harmful trends have been observed with regard to access to pay television. Above all, there is differentiation of rates for channels available to operators for distribution. There is also a practice of exploitation by broadcasters of a monopoly by forcing operators to purchase channel packages while not giving them the option of purchasing single channels offered by the broadcaster.” 

The website Euractive.com has reported that on Friday, 10 June, the European Parliament opposed the new version of the Digital Services Act (DSA) drafted when a political consensus was reached in the April 2022 Trilogue.

The majority of MEPs believe that two crucial indents, 28 and 29, of the finalized wording of the proposal for the regulation breach that consensus.

Meanwhile, indent 28 is the most controversial. In the EP’s view this does not provide adequate protection for copyright holders as hosting service providers can be ordered to follow the notice and stay down rule when monitoring illegal content.

A clause of that kind would be an exception to the upheld rule, already known from the E-commerce Directive, under which a general obligation cannot be placed on intermediaries to monitor content posted on their platforms. Although MEPs might not support inserting the indent 29 amendments into the Digital Services Act, they are willing to accept it as part of a compromise in which the Council of the European Union agrees that the version of indent 28 proposed by the EP can remain.

The objection raised in this matter is surprising, as a vote on the finalized version of the DSA was provisionally scheduled for an EP plenary session to be held on 4 July, 2022.

Link to the article.
Link to the agenda of Plenary Sittings.

The Supreme Court issued a judgment on 27 May 2022 dismissing a cassation appeal lodged by the defendants in a case against the operator of Chomikuj. The judgment upholds the Kraków Appeal Court judgment ordering the operator of the website to filter content to eliminate files from the films concerned in the case, and awarding compensation for infringement.

The written statement of reasons is not available yet, but this dismissal confirms the Kraków Appeal Court’s standpoint that Chomikuj is liable for direct infringement of copyright.

The judgment therefore brings this case, which concerns a legal precedent, to a close, and demonstrates that even before the DSM directive is implemented, online providers can be held liable for copyright infringement caused by users’ conduct. Online platforms are not merely required to take down content identified by rightholders. They are also required to ensure that the content is not posted on the site in the future. Thus even now, under Polish law, the rules laid down in the CJEU judgment in cases C-682/18 and C-683/18 (YouTube/Cyando) apply. We are glad to have played a role in the formation of Polish copyright case law. Special congratulations go to Tomasz Targosz PhD, who acted for the plaintiffs in the case.

We are pleased to announce that Agnieszka Wachowska has been appointed an ICT law PIIT expert.

She is a legal expert with more than ten years of experience in supporting IT projects. She is a member of the Firm’s TMT Practice and is head of the IT-Telco and Public Procurement Teams. She specializes in legal issues related to new technologies and copyright. Since the beginning of her legal career, she has been advising IT entities, including public entities, on issues related to IT law, public procurement of IT supplies and services, and cyber security. She is responsible for providing legal assistance to telecommunications operators and advising on telecommunications law.

She has participated in over a hundred projects that involved drafting and negotiating IT contracts, including implementation, maintenance, hosting, and license contracts, as well as SaaS, Paas and IaaS. She has also participated in a number of large and comprehensive audits of IT-related contracts, including audits to determine the scope of rights to software and possibility to move software to a digital cloud environment.