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Working in EuropeIntellectual Property RightsPoland

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

 

Poland follows the European regulations on intellectual property rights (IPR) in the areas of copyright, patents, trademarks and industrial designs. IPR is an umbrella term covering two categories: copyright and industrial property. The common feature of these rights is the intangible nature of the goods to which they relate and their territorial protection.

IPR and work agreements

If you are coming to work in Poland, you should check what type of contract you will sign. It is often the employer who has the rights to intellectual property. So it depends on the type of the contract you have and the internal rules of the employing organisation.

There are two types of employment contracts in Poland: a regular employment contract and civil law contracts (umowa zlecenie and umowa o dzieło). Read more

As far as civil law contracts are concerned, the IPR settlement depends on what is written in the contract. If a civil law contract does not specify any IPR issues, the IPR for an invention or piece of work belongs to the author. On the other hand, if you have an employment contract, all the results of your work (including copyrights and other IPRs) belong to the employer.

Copyrights

The institution in charge of copyright policy in Poland is the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

There are two categories of copyright: moral rights and economic rights. Moral rights are inalienable and therefore always belong to the author. Economic rights are more complicated. According to Polish law, the employing institution has the priority to publish the work of an employee who has created it as a result of his or her work duties. Nevertheless, the author has the right to financial benefits.

If the institution does not sign a relevant contract with the author within 6 months from the date of delivery of the work, or if the work has not been published within 2 years from the date of receipt, the author has the right to decide how and where his or her work will be published. The employer (scientific institution) has the right to use the results produced free-of-charge and to make them available to other scientists for the purposes of their research or teaching, if this results from the agreed purpose of the work or is provided for in the contract.

As far as the results of scientific research are concerned, everything depends on the content of the employment contract. This is why it is so important to read the contract that you sign, paying particular attention to the issues relating to the copyrights of your work.

Industrial property rights

The Polish Patent Office is responsible for the patents, trademarks, and industrial design issues.

When it comes to industrial property rights, the right to obtain a patent belongs in principle to the author. However, if the invention was made as a result of work performed, the right to the patent belongs to the employer. The employer may waive this right in favour of the author. According to the regulations, the author is entitled to financial benefits resulting from the use of the invention, unless the parties have agreed otherwise. Most institutions have their own rules governing IPR issues, and these rules or the contract should be the main source of detailed information.

If you are going to work at a university or a research institute, the IPR regime will be a bit different. In Poland we have a type of professors’ privilege. If you inform your employer about your result and the university or research institute is not interested in commercialising it, you can buy this result from your university/research institute. The price is set by law and its maximum value may not exceed 10% of the value of a minimum salary in Poland. You become the owner of the result after signing a contract on transfer of the reult ownership. If you are not interested in commercialising your results, the ownership remains with the university/research institute.

IPR support

Most science and higher education institutions have their own rules for the protection, use and management of intellectual work results, as well as rules for their commercialisation.

Within the institutions, there are departments responsible for IPR acquisition, business cooperation and technology transfer, e.g. technology transfer centres, legal and patent offices, as well as innovation brokers and patent attorneys.