Copyright to PN

Pursuant to Article 5(5) of the Standardization Act of 12 September 2002 (consolidated version: Journal of Laws of 2015, item 1483), Polish Standards are copyright-protected like literary works, and the author’s economic rights belong to the Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN). The consent of PKN must be obtained in order to publish and distribute Polish Standards on any carrier (paper of electronic ones). The PNs and other standardization products are provided with a marking in the form of a hologram or a watermark. Publishing documents without the PKN’s marking is illegal under the current legislation, and information included in such documents may be incomplete or out of date.

The terms and conditions of exercise of copyrights to the PNs and other standardization documents are set forth in the Reprint Rules.

A one-off license for reprinting of standards may be issued at request by the External Relations Department. However, the terms and conditions set forth in these Rules do not apply in the event that the protected works are used by specific types of entities for teaching purposes, i.e. research and educational institutions may, for teaching purposes or for their own research, use distributed works in the original and in translations, and may for this purpose prepare copies of excerpts from the distributed work (Article 27 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act of 4 February 1994 – consolidated version: Journal of Laws of 2021, item 1062, as amended). Quotations are regulated by the provisions of Article 29 in conjunction with Articles 34 and 35 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act of 4 February 1994 concerning the limitation of exclusive copyrights in favour of permitted use.

An infringement of PKN’ rights is a criminal offence subject to criminal proceedings in the meaning of
the Copyright and Related Rights Act of 4 February 1994.

As a member of international standardization organizations ISO and IEC, and of European standardization organizations CEN and CENELEC, which are private organizations, the Polish Committee for Standardization is responsible for protecting the copyrights to standards prepared by these organizations. The International and European Standards