Conflicts between the rights of the designer and the plans of the owner of a building
Polish Copyright Act provides a list of author's copyrights and defines it very broadly. Those copyrights embrace an author of an architectural work as well. The designer has, for example, the right to sign a work with its name, to supervise on how to use it, or to preserve an integrity of its content and form (Article 16). The latter copyright is the main worry for the owners of renovated property. The investor intending to redevelop the property risks facing the claims of the designers. It is to be remembered when acquiring buildings, since the mere acquisition of the building does not include by itself the IP rights to the designs. Moreover, the effectiveness of “general” clauses empowering the owner to change the design, may be questioned.
Article 33 [5] of the Polish Copyright Act states that one can use a creator's work - in the form of a building - in order to rebuild or renovate a building. However, this does not refer to actual changes to the building – so will not provide much comfort for re-develompent plans. Gdansk Court of Appeal (III APo 8/2008) ruled that the cited provision should not violate "any of the elements of author's moral copyrights, like the right to inviolability of the content and form of the work"!
How else can owner of the property defend itself? For instance with claiming that a re-development is an adaptation of an original work. If the given changes are additionally necessary or justified - the owner has here a good chance to win (e.g. Supreme Court IV CR 193/81) Moreover, an owner could point out that a building is not even an artwork and the provisions of Polish Copyright Act should not apply at all, but this is a risky approach.
It seems that the protection of the owner is not the strongest and in my personal view it is too weak. Taking into account lack of significant number of the Highest Court judgments (what in itself may be the sign that parties do not risk litigation in this area and strive to settle cases in another way) and not very clear legislative solution to the relation between the design as the art work and its materialization, the path to changing the status quo seems open and awaits determined landlords.
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