newtech.law - legal aspects of new technologies

Does a company or limited partnership have to
have its own website? Does it have to operate the site itself? What information
must be posted there? Practical pointers under the amended Commercial Companies
Code

An amendment to the Commercial Companies Code entered into force at the start of 2020, imposing on joint-stock companies and joint-stock limited partnerships an obligation to operate a website and to post certain information there for stockholders (as we previously reported here).

Although
the new regulation applies to all joint-stock companies, in practice it changes
little for public companies, which were already subject to much more extensive
requirements, and thus we do not discuss public companies further in this
article.

The new regulation should be examined more closely, as it has generated (probably unintentionally) certain doubts as to what the new obligation entails.

The Polish edition of the Global Legal Hackathon will be held this year on 6–8 March in Warsaw. Once again our blog will serve as a media patron for the global efforts of legal tech aficionados. Wardyński & Partners is also a patron of the event.

Across all fields of life we witness groundbreaking changes brought by new technologies. Progressive digitalisation is not sparing the financial markets, which are indeed perceived as an area that will be shifted almost entirely into the digital world. The goods traded on financial markets rarely take material form, but are typically some type of abstract right.

The basic and most obvious challenge for digitalisation of financial markets is to eliminate paper where entries in IT systems prove to work better. Traditionally and historically, securities have taken paper form, but that clearly does not meet the requirements of contemporary trading on financial markets studded with state-of-the-art technologies.

In an earlier article I wrote about FinTech in the draft Polish Capital
Markets Strategy (SRRK). There were lots of FinTech strands in the strategy, undoubtedly
confronting one of the identified structural barriers to the growth of the
capital markets in Poland, described as “outdated technologies or a lack of
technologies in key segments of the market, including inadequate investment in
FinTech solutions.”

The final version of the SRRK strategy, adopted by the Council of Ministers on 1 October 2019, continues to devote many remarks to FinTech. Use of competitive new technologies is included among the five fundamental principles to be followed in implementing the strategy. Considering that over the last few years there has hardly been any technology generating as much interest on the financial markets as DLT/blockchain, it was natural to include it in the strategy.

An anti-obscenity association issued a proposal for an Act on Protection of Minors against Pornographic Content on 16 December 2019. It has gained the official support of the Family Council, which recommended to the Prime Minister that the proposal be adopted for further legislative work. The Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy announced that work on the bill should conclude in the first half of 2020. The need to restrict children’s access to pornography is obvious, but the proposal has generated much controversy, mainly due to the proposed mechanism for age verification, which may invade internet users’ privacy. The proposal would also impose additional obligations on telecommunications operators, electronic service providers, and payment service providers.

Are computer games still
a niche product, or have they entered the mainstream? The possibility of
registering a trademark similar to an earlier mark turns on this issue.

Kalypso Media Group GmbH v EUIPO, Case T‑700/18
(judgment of the General Court of 10 October 2019)

The computer game
industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, in Poland as elsewhere.
Dynamic growth carries the risk of disputes affecting various aspects
of gaming.

A case recently reached the docket of the General Court (a division of the Court of Justice of the European Union) concerning the application for registration of an EU trademark for the word sign DUNGEONS by Kalypso Media Group GmbH. The application was opposed by Wizards of the Coast LLC, proprietor of the earlier EU word mark DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. The European Union Intellectual Property Office upheld the opposition and denied registration of DUNGEONS, finding that there was a likelihood of confusion with the earlier mark DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.