Controversies Around the Concept of “Official Material”

Art. 4(2) of the Act of Copyright and Related Rights (1994) excludes the texts mentioned therein from the protection provided for in the copyright law. The legislator makes use of the reference to the regulation of national law contained in the Berne Convention. Of the exclusions listed in Art. 4(2) ‘official materials’ are the most undefined conceptual category. In many judgments the administrative courts have placed all written studies which did not have the characteristics of an ‘official document’ in the category of ‘official materials’. This concerns materials produced by public authorities and studies submitted at the request of an office by external entities. The author analyses judgments of administrative courts in which the concept of official material appeared and the qualifications to this category. He points to the jurisprudence according to which the official material is a text which a) comes from a public authority, b) relates to an official case, and c) was created as a result of an official procedure. This approach is opposed by the Supreme Court in their judgment of 2009 and the bulk of copyright doctrine. In the final part the author discusses the status of the expert studies and justifies his own terminology proposals.