So... I decided to
start blogging in English, becoming again a prudent chef of the IP Law
Poland Blog. Since my last blogging activity a lot of things change in my life
including “hello - world” from my two lovely kids, Robert (4) and
Aleksandra (2). Moreover after pursuing for many years my solo legal practice
which was more devoted to the business transactions, I came back to the roots,
the IT/IP law which was always the area of my top personal interest and
fascination. It was also a good decision to join almost a year ago to the Warsaw IP/TMT team
of CMS Cameron McKenna, led by talented Tomasz Koryzma. Ladies and Gents, let’s
have a cookin’ session tonight, the bar is open !
One 2012 cocktail please ! What happened in
2012...
Among IT
projects the most interesting seems to be the start of the
implementation of the complex e - health system, that will be
implemented in the healthcare sector. The project, worth c.a. $ 300 million has
been co-funded by the European cohesion funds. Go – live of the whole
project is envisaged for August 2014 when all healthcare
providers will have to run electronic health record systems (ERH)
and exchange the documentation by electronic means. This is a great challenge
for all participants with respect to the data management and data protection
and the clock is already ticking…
The IT wind went
also through energy industry which has been a subject of legislative changes
aimed at introducing more competition to the energy sector. There were several
public tenders for billing systems for energy providers of a quite big value,
some of them are still undergoing.
Many legal changes
resulted from the EU law obligations, including Act on re –
use of public information which was brought into force with
a huge delay and after receiving of many bitter words from the European
Commission and the NGO’s.
An important
change for Polish telecom clients is a thick amendment to the
Telecommunication Act, aimed at providing better protection of a telecom
customer. The new law is binding since December 2012. This
change included also a new “cookie law”. According to the new
rules, the cookies for the Polish cookie – eaters should be served by a prior
acceptance of browser user, however such user may express his or her consent by
setting up a browser “properly”. How this will work in practice - we will
see.
After fierce
reaction of the society for governmental talks-behind-the-closed-doors when
negotiating international agreements (just to mention thousands of
protesters on anti-ACTA marches in the
major Polish cities) the Government become more open for public control.
A strong shake for
2013?
I believe that
2013 will bring several important changes to the Polish law including a new
regulation of notice and takedown procedure under Act on providing services by
electronic means. This change may have important consequences for the whole
e-industry running business in Poland. The Government declared that the idea
behind the change is to provide full protection to the online service
providers against claims resulting from the IPR infringements. Some of
the market players said however, that this protection may lead to the increased
Internet piracy rate.
In regard of personal
data protection, the adoption of FATCA agreement by the US
government will probably be the most challenging issue for Polish financial
institutions. According to Polish Data Protection Act in such case a consent of
the data subject will be required to send data to U.S. based recipient. Due to
the fact, that data subject will be forced in fact to express his or her
consent on data transfer, the matter will bring a lot of controversy. Bearing
in mind the anti – ACTA protests the chance of concluding the international
treaty between Poland and the US Gov seems to be unrealistic.
Apart of that all
privacy lawyers will wait for a final draft of the new European regulation
on data protection. In Poland the common opinion is that Polish Data
Protection Act does not provide answers for many important questions resulting
from progress and changes of technology used for data processing. The rumors
say that if the Regulation will not become a binding act there will be a change
of Polish regulations in order to modernize them. It must noted also that
Polish privacy laws are painfully restrictive in regard of the cloud
computing, especially when personal data are being transferred
aboard to non-EEA countries.
There are many
more interesting projects and law changes for 2013, however the idea behind
this first in 2013 post was different – to say hello after many years of
silence to the blog readers and to give them a short update from snowy Poland J
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