Questions & Answers

No, they can’t. Authors’ moral rights are inalienable. The author may however undertake certain actions, e.g. waive using these rights to the benefit of a given entity and to a certain extent, thus authorising this entity (usually the buyer of the author’s economic rights) to step into the scope of the author’s moral rights.

No, you are not. Payment for a work does not automatically transfer the copyrights from the author to the buyer. Such a transfer requires a contract that meets the requirements specified in the Act on copyrights and related rights.

No, they can’t. Authors’ economic rights can only be purchased in the fields of exploitation specified in the agreement. For a broader right transfer, it must be indicated that the buyer also purchases the right to exercise derivative copyrights. As for future exploitation fields, authors’ economic rights in this area are not automatically transferred onto the buyer. Usually it requires concluding a separate agreement.

No, it is not. Transferring the copyrights to a work must specify the relevant fields of exploitation and requires written form or is otherwise null and void.

“Purchasing” an Internet domain does not actually mean fully buying it. The subscriber only purchases the service of registering and maintaining a particular Internet domain. The provider maintains the domain and calculates the cost of this service per annum, which is why you are requested to pay an annual fee for prolonging your subscription.

No, you do not. A logo does not have to be registered as a trademark to be legally protected, and it usually already is as a result of legal regulations, including the Act on copyrights and related rights and the Act on combating unfair competition. However, registering the logo as a trademark increases the scope of its protection and simplifies potential pursuit of claims.

That depends on the conditions of your employment contract and the scope of your work responsibilities. Pursuant to Article 12 of the Act on copyrights, unless the Act or employment contract state otherwise, the employer whose employee has created a work in the course of performing his/her contractual duties acquires, at the moment of accepting the work, the author’s economic rights within the scope resulting from the purpose of the employment contract and the consensual intention of the parties. Therefore, if creating the logo is not part of your contractual duties and the employment contract does not state otherwise, we can assume that the author’s economic rights to the logo should not be transferred onto the employer and you are entitled to adequate remuneration for using it.

In case of works created under civil-law agreements, transferring authors’ economic rights requires indicating the fields of exploitation in which the transfer will be effective. If the contract for a specified task does not contain such provisions, the ordering party does not acquire any copyrights.

That depends on the case type, the courts workload in a particular period, different factors and variables in the litigation process, such as the illness of witnesses or of the adjudication panel. When filing a case, you should ask your lawyer about the possible waiting time for closing a case, yet remember that it is impossible to give an exact and binding answer.

Not as a rule. You must appear in court for a case where the court indicated your obligatory appearance. If you do not have a professional legal representative, you should also be present at the preliminary hearing, since in certain cases the court may issue a default judgement. You should consult your each appearance in court with the professional who represents you in court.

Yes, you do. Upon the court’s request, the witness is obliged to appear in court. However, you are not always obliged to testify. In some circumstances the regulations release certain persons from the obligation to testify (e.g. the parties’ legal representatives). The law also allows for certain persons to refuse to testify (the parties’ spouses, ascendants, descendants and siblings, relatives by affinity in the same line and degree, as well as persons adopted). In certain cases the witness may also refuse to answer particular questions.

All lawyers in court wear black robes, however the colour of the robes’ jabots and lining depend on the function. Purple is for the judge, red is for the prosecutor, green is for advocates, blue is for attorneys-at-law and grey is for the Treasury Solicitor. Court reporters usually do not wear robes, however it happens in some courts, in which case their robes are black, without colour jabots or lining.

Yes, you are. As a party to the litigation, you are entitled to review the records of your case at its any stage. In order to do that, you need to order the relevant records in the customer service department of a given court for a particular day. The records will be made accessible to you in the reading room of the court. If the party to a litigation is a legal person or an entity having legal capacity, it is essential that the person who appears in court to see the records has adequate authorisation (e.g. an authorisation and a print-out from the National Court Register).