Legal protection of an image of individuals and companies
Under Polish law, personal rights are values of a non-property nature, associated with a person’s personality, which are considered common in society. One of the values indisputably recognized as a person’s personal right is his or her image. A person’s image, in turn, is defined as a physical image representing a person’s appearance that can remain in the consciousness of others and be remembered in a way that depicts the characteristic features of a person’s appearance. The flagship example of the concretization of a person’s image is his or her photograph.
The qualification of an image as a person’s personal right results in the person being granted protection against its recording, distortion and dissemination by others. In practice, the most common example of violation of a personal right in the form of an image is its dissemination by another person without obtaining the appropriate consent (e.g. publication of a photo on the Internet). It should be borne in mind that in order for there to be an infringement, the disseminated image must allow for the identification of the person fixed in the photo (the photo must therefore not be “blurred” in such a way that it is impossible to determine who is fixed in it).
If a person’s personal image is unlawfully violated, he or she may be entitled to a number of claims on this ground in the form of:
- demand to desist from further infringement (which could, in practice, be tantamount to a request to remove the photo from the Internet);
- to demand the elimination of the consequences of the violation (which could, in practice, be tantamount to demanding that the violator make an appropriate apology),
- demand payment of monetary compensation to the person whose image has been violated or payment of a sum of money to a designated social purpose (the amount that can be demanded in such a case depends in each case on the details of the specific case and the scale of the harm suffered by the person whose image has been violated).
It is important to remember that not every dissemination of a person’s image will constitute an unlawful violation of personal rights. A person’s expression of permission to disseminate his or her image is the most common reason for concluding that there has been no unlawful violation. However, permission to disseminate an image cannot be presumed and can be expressed in any form (the most important thing is that the statement of permission should be clear and precise).
In doing so, Polish law states that permission is not required to disseminate an image:
- a well-known person, if the image was taken in connection with the performance of public functions, in particular political, social, professional functions (thus, for example, permission is not required for an MP to disseminate in the media his photo, which was taken during the MP’s speech from the rostrum in the Polish Parliament);
- of a person constituting only a detail of a whole such as a gathering, a landscape, a public event (thus, for example, permission need not be required for a person sitting in a stadium stand to disseminate a photo of a football match with the image of the fan in question in the background).
It should be borne in mind that a person’s image should not be referred to the so-called “social image”, which is the way he is perceived in society or a given environment. However, content detrimental to a person’s good name may constitute a violation of separate personal property.
Personal image rights are enjoyed by any person, including a sole proprietor. However, it is not entitled to legal entities (e.g., a limited liability company). However, the unlawful use of a company’s logo or registered trademark can be legally counteracted on other grounds without reference to the personal image right.
