Template talk:PD-Poland

Discussion

It should be said, that such photographs are not necessarily public domain. A copyright law stated, that a photograph is a subject of copyright if it has clear copyright notice. Therefeore, if we see, that a photograph was published without a copyright notice - we may assume, that it was not copyrighted (unless it was first published in other place with such a notice). Anyway, it is the copyright holder, who should prove, that a person, who used such photo without a notice, knew it was copyrighted.

Some explanation:

According to the copyright law of Polish People's Republic of July 10, 1952: a photograph is a subject of copyright, if there is a clear copyright notice on the work (Art. 2 §1). There was a similar rule in the previous copyright law of 1926. This rule existed for the works published until 23 May 1994.

According to some court verdicts, general © in a book is enough copyright notice.

The copyright law of 1952 concerned photographs taken by the Polish author, or first published in Poland.

There is a situation possible, when original prints of the photograph had copyright notice, but they were published in some later book without any copyright notice. As a result, somebody who sees them without copyright notice, might not know, that they are copyrighted.
According to the Polish Highest Court verdict (published in OSNC 2003/7-8/110): if there was no copyright notice on later prints, the photograph is still copyrighted, BUT it is the copyright holder to prove, that the person, who used it, had known, that it had been copyrighted. Remember, however, that Court verdicts are not precedent law in Poland, and can only be treated as opinions for future - and note, that this is not a legal law opinion on my side. Pibwl 20:27, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Commons

Commons: commons:Template:PD-Polish.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 16:34, 10 April 2006 (UTC)