Holders of economic copyright have available to them special tools to enforce their rights effectively. From the point of view of breach of copyright, the Polish Copyright Act of 1994 (text: ISAP) is particularly important.

Claims of this kind become particularly important in disputes handled by professional entities, i.e. collecting societies, instigated in connection with protection of rights managed by collecting societies on the basis of law.

A dispute of this kind was the subject of the recent Supreme Court judgement (case no. IV CSK 484/15). The Supreme Court made reference in that judgement to a cassation appeal filed by a cable television operator providing a television signal in a local town. The operator contested rulings issued by courts of consecutive instances, which in practice fully acknowledged the arguments put forward by a collecting society raising claims for breach of copyright due to rebroadcasting of audiovisual works without a licence agreement required under Article 21(1) of that act.

The Supreme Court judgement referred to is interesting among other things due to the fact that it was reached following a painstaking assessment of the collecting society’s claims for payment and for injunction. This was also done with the principle of proportionality in mind.

See in PUBLICATIONS: Dreifacher pauschaler Schadensersatz…