Founded in Paris in 1920, Gide is a leading international law firm with 12 offices spread throughout the world.
Gide is physically present in six regions of the world, with 11 offices, enabling it to act on cases globally.
9 February 2021
Lawyers from Gide Warsaw’s Litigation and Arbitration Department successfully represented a leading Polish television broadcaster in proceedings to enforce a District of Columbia court judgment ordering the client to pay multimillion-dollar damages for an alleged infringement of the claimant’s copyrights.
The case concerning an alleged infringement of licence rights in connection with the client broadcasting television programmes for which the claimant had been granted an exclusive licence. The District Court in DC (USA) awarded the claimant damages in excess of USD 3 million. In order to enforce the DC court judgment in Poland, the claimant applied to the Warsaw District Court for a declaration of enforceability of the foreign court judgment.
In a decision dated 19 November 2020, the Warsaw Court of Appeals reversed the first instance decision and dismissed the request for enforcement in full, thereby prohibiting the enforcement of the US judgment in Poland.
The court sustained both arguments raised in appeal by Gide’s attorneys:
The payment awarded to the claimant under the US Copyright Act comprised statutory damages (available under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)), punitive in nature and entirely unrelated to any amount of actual damages. The Court of Appeals concluded that the enforcement of a such judgment in Poland would be contrary to the constitutional principles of proportionality and the compensatory nature of damages. The decision is subject to a cassation complaint.
The client was represented in court by advocates Michał Kacperczyk and Krzysztof Ciepliński from the Litigation and Arbitration Department led by partner Piotr Sadownik. Supporting the Warsaw team on matters related to US law and procedure were David M. Levy, Pamela A. Frederick and Ross Yustein from the law firm Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen.
"This is a decision of a directional nature, important for the whole litigation practice, first and foremost the civil law practice. It concerns the concept of damage and its scope from the perspective of copyright protection, which may be helpful in estimating the value of damage and in deciding whether the European and national directives waive the obligation to prove the existence of damage and its extent," said Piotr Sadownik, partner, Head of the Litigation and Arbitration Department and Intellectual Property Practice at Gide Warsaw.
