Jacek Piasta

CJEU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar delivered an opinion on 22 February 2024 in case C-135/23 concerning the interpretation of the concept of “communication to the public” of works.

CJEU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar delivered an opinion on 22 February 2024 in case C-135/23 concerning the interpretation of the concept of “communication to the public” of works. One of the challenges faced by the Advocate General was to clarify the meaning of this concept in line with the extensive CJEU case law related to this legal institution.

In Poland, the system of compensation for authors and other rightholders for private copying relies on fees charged per device or data carrier used for this purpose. For many years, authors and collecting societies have pointed out that the system in Poland is not in line with EU law due to the remuneration this generates being glaringlylow, and that therefore it does not qualify as fair compensation. According to them this is because the fees in Poland are charged on devices and data carriers, which are no longer on sale, or trade in them on the market is minimal.

At the end of March 2023, the EC filed an action with the CJEU against Poland for failing to implement the copyright directives. The EC’s decision was due to Poland not declaring the way in which it would harmonize its laws with the Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (2019/790) , and failing to notify the EC of transposition in full of SatCab II, a directive applicable to certain online transmissions and retransmissions of television and radio programmes (directive EU 2019/789) . Work on the Polish bill implementing those directives is still in its early stages – the bill has not been submitted to the Polish Sejm or adopted by the Council of Ministers.