Sergiusz Pawłowicz who was also the leading programmer of Janosik project, went the same administrative proceedings as the ISOC Poland. See “Access to public information, case OSK 600/04“. At the final stage the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed Sergiusz’s complaint on the decision of the Voivodeship Administrative Court case file II SAB/Wr 72/02, recognizing that the proper course shall be a civil action.

Sergiusz filed a complaint requesting the civil court to order ZUS to disclose specification of KSI MAIL protocol being public information. The Regional Court in Warszawa in its judgment of 8 December 2006 case file XVI C942/04 ruled that publication of the protocol that is used by Płatnik software will not affect in any way the integrity of safety of data sent by this software. Therefore all arguments raised by ZUS with regard to data security were unfounded. The Court also held that ZUS did not prove that the protocol of KSI MAIL is protected by copyrights that belongs to Prokom Software S.A. or whether Prokom received any patent covering this protocol. As for the argument that ZUS’s obligations regarding confidentiality of information about technologies used in Płatnik and its source code, which resulted from the agreement between ZUS and Prokom, the court held that according to the obligation to disclose public information as provided in the Article 13 of the Polish Act of 17 February 2005 on the Informatization of Entities Performing Public Tasks – IEPPT – (in Polish: ustawa o informatyzacji działalności podmiotów realizujących zadania publiczne), published in Journal of Laws (Dziennik Ustaw) No 64, item 565 as amended, the provision of the agreement as a ius dispositivum, may not impose negative consequences on Sergiusz. The court also held that the use of the requested public information and legal interest that Sergiusz and its legal representative derrived from the social interest was beyond the scope of the whole dispute. Simply, there is no need to prove legal interest when requesting the access to public information.

ZUS filed an appeal complaint. The Appellate Court in Warsaw in its judgment of 23 April 2007 case file V Ca 454/07 dismissed it. The Court held that the court of first instance provided deep and proper analysis of binding legal norms and its judgment was correctly applied.

Categories: Art. 1 ARNR | Art. 1(1) API | Art. 5(2) API | Art. 75 ARNR | copyright law | copyrightable subject matter | e-law issues | free or libre and open source software | legal regulations on computer networks | Polish Act on Access to Public Information | Polish Act on Authors Rights and Neighbouring Rights | Polish Appeallate Court | Polish Regional Court | Polish Supreme Administrative Court | public information | Voivodeship Administrative Court.