Poland — IP and Copyright clauses you need to get right in your contract

Poland has recently become quite famous for its skilled and resourceful IT specialists. Each year thousands of new computer engineers (programmers, developers, testers, designers etc.) enter into the market, warmly welcomed by domestic and multinational companies. A big part of these young talents open their own firm or business as free lancers developing software for clients from European countries as well as from US, Canada, Japan, China, etc.

However, companies who want to cooperate with these partners and assign software development to a Polish IT company or freelancer should be aware that the copyright law in Poland is very strict, as it mainly protects the creator and not the client. Therefore, to be on a safe side, it is better to follow these 7 basic rules:

1. Never start cooperation with an IT specialist or an IT company without a formal agreement. And I mean a real agreement, in a written form, with signatures of persons who can validly contract on behalf of the companies. The form is very important because – under Polish law – copyrights transfer and exclusive license agreements not fulfilling form conditions are null and void. Moreover, if there is no agreement, Polish copyright rules will apply to all intellectual property matters.
2. Please remember that software is a creation protected by copyright law. Therefore you should consider whether you want to acquire the entire intellectual property rights or you just need a license. If you need a full IP transfer, you need to put it expressly in the agreement; otherwise you will only get a non-exclusive licence. And these, in several cases, will not be useful from a business point of view. If a license is enough, it is advisable to agree if it will be exclusive or non-exclusive.
3. When drafting an IP clause, be detailed and clear. If you want to be able to decompile and disassembly the binary code, specify it in the IP clause. If you want to be able to introduce modifications to the source code, specify it in the IP clause. If you want to sublicense the software, specify it in the IP clause. The IP clause shall contain the description of any way you want to use the software, whether on mobile devices or on personal computers, any other electronic device or via internet (e.g. cloud computing). And believe me, when I write «specify it in the IP clause» it means that you really, really have to put it there. Otherwise it will be null and void and you may face a situation where your smart IT engineer, after getting paid, will sue you for the IP infringement.
4. Remember that you should indicate the timeframe and the geographical scope of the license or IP transfer. If you do not specify it expressly in the agreement, you will only be entitled to a 5-year license, automatically expiring afterwards.
5. Draft carefully a clause related to termination of the agreement. Under Polish law the licensor may terminate the license agreement granted for an indefinite period of time upon 1-year notice. If you do not want to find yourself in a situation where you lose the software IP rights in the middle of a big project, make sure that from the very beginning you are on a safe side.
6. Make sure that your partner is obliged to transfer you upon request all software documentation and the source code.
7. Make sure that you have a good indemnification clause with no limitation of liability. Often Polish IT companies subcontract some part of the development work to free lancers. You never know if they will conclude proper agreements with their subcontractors and if they will legally acquire the IP of the software that they will later sell you. There is always the risk that in the future some Polish IT engineer you never met will raise IP infringement claims against you, trying to prove that he/she actually developed the software. In such a situation an indemnification clause will help you recovering the costs from your partner.