Wojdyło - legal aspects of new technologies

The EU’s eIDAS Regulation enters into force on 1 July 2016. The importance of this somewhat mysterious act is not yet widely appreciated. It opens up new possibilities and creates space for very interesting new services.

Work on the new Trade Secrets Directive is approaching the end. One of the most contro­versial provisions of the proposal concerns information obtained through reverse engineer­ing—examining a product to determine how it was made and how it works.

Several regulations setting maximum levels for interchange fees have entered the legal system recently. It is already clear that these regulations are having a major impact on the market, causing some enterprises to revise their business model. An interesting issue from the point of view of the law of new technologies is whether these regulations are technologically neutral, or apply only to a selected group of payment instruments.

Poland’s first clearinghouse for cash-free payments was established in 1990. In 1991 the first payment cards for individual clients were issued in Poland. The history of cash-free trade in this country now goes back over a quarter-century. But one of the key Polish regulations governing money—the Foreign Exchange Law—has not kept pace with the evolution of the forms in which money is used, but remains fixed in times when the dominant form of money was cash. There are many signs that this state of affairs may soon change.

New regulations and interpretations will soon have an impact on equity- and debt-based crowdfunding business models.

Investment crowdfunding (understood to mean equity-based and debt-based crowdfunding) currently enjoys great regulatory leeway due to the lack of regulations specifically addressed to the crowdfunding market. But some current and planned regulations may impede its growth. Recent regulatory proposals as well as inter­pretations could significantly change the current shape of the market, creating both incentives and barriers for participants.