Since August 17, 2015 the courts of the Member States of the European Union have been applying in succession matters the conflict‑of‑laws rules incorporated in the Regulation No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of July 4, 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions as well as acceptance and enforcement of authentic instruments in matters of succession and on the creation of the European Certificate of Succession. From the Polish point of view, it indicates not only the restriction of the freedom of choice of a law applicable in succession matters and the change of the general connecting factor for the purposes of determining both jurisdiction and the applicable law, but also a new approach to the doctrine of renvoi. In opposition to the other European instruments of private international law, the Succession Regulation enables, in a limited scope, the application of the foreign conflict‑of‑laws rules if those rules provide for renvoi either in reference to the law of a Member State or to the law of a third State which would apply their own law to the succession. For Polish courts it means that they have to take account of the private international rules of foreign countries to a greater extent than under our own conflict‑of‑laws rules from the 2011. The interpretation of the renvoi in the Regulation could be however a little misleading. It is not clear whether their rules accept only the renvoi arising from the rules of the third State or from the other Member State’s private international law, too. It does not determine expressly the importance of the foreign conflict‑of‑law rules concerning renvoi and the effectiveness of the choice of law made by the deceased under that private international law. The other controversial issue is the scope of the renvoi ergo the problem of the acceptance of partial or multiplicated renvoi.

While heading for development of the digital libraries initiative European Union came across an issue witch preclude digitization of right smart of works located in collections of European cultural institutions. The issue of orphan works become a significant problem, which according to the intention of EU should be comprehensively and resolved in an effective way. For this purpose in the directive 2012/28/EU from 25th October 2012 on certain permitted uses of orphan works, permissible use of orphan works was regulated. The most important of prerequisites is carrying out a diligent search for the rightholders. The aim of this article is to discuss the diligent search, including phases of diligent search, the place where it shall be carried out and standards which it should characterize. The issue is important as obtaining the status of an orphan work in the territory of one of the Member States produce the same results as if the diligent search was carried out in all Member States. The article relates to EnDOW project’s results, which is dedicated to research of diligent search in twenty Member States.

Given the increased mobility of EU citizens, the European Parliament and the Council adopted the Succession Regulation on 4 July 2012 (Regulation (EU) No. 650/2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and acceptance and enforcement of authentic instruments in matters of succession and on the creation of a European Certificate of Succession). The EU Succession Regulation was introduced with the aim of unifying succession laws across EU member states. The Succession Regulation introducesrules on the law governing inheritance matters. The article is an attempt to highlight the rules determining the applicable law. Succession Regulation provides a general rule that “the law applicable to the succession as a whole shall be the law of the State in which the deceased had his habitual residence at the time of death”. For persons who hold assets in those EU Member States which apply the Regulation, the default position is that the succession of those assets on death will be governed by the law of the country in which the person in question died habitually resident. Alternatively, such a person may opt for the law of their nationality to be applied to the succession and administration of their estates. This means that the choice of law will be included in the decedent’s will. All EU member states have signed up to the Regulation with the exception of the UK, Ireland and Denmark. The Regulation applied to deaths that occur on and after 17 August 2015.

The appointment of the applicable law to appeal against fraudulent acts of a bankrupt in cross-border insolvency proceedings is a complex process that is not uniformly accepted by law. The application of the statute of lex fori concursus in relation to the principles of nullity, appealing or relative ineffectiveness of legal acts performed against the general creditors does not raise any objections and is accepted due to the effectiveness and efficiency of the bankruptcy proceedings. Mechanism which is based on art. 16 of the Regulation 2015/848 provides the possibility of raising a charge of subordination of a given act to a law other than the law lex fori concursus, which allows the absolute subordination of this act to the law of the state of proceedings, despite the lex causae law. The appointment of the applicable law to the legal act has not been uniformly implemented so far. As a result of this, there were two views, one of which allowed the application of conflict‑of‑law rules in the lex fori concursus state, contrary to this view pointed the necessity to apply to the private law rules of private international law according to the country of the court of competent jurisdiction. Currently, matters related to appealing against bankruptcy are subject to the jurisdiction of the court with jurisdiction to initiate proceedings, which results in recognition that applicable law will be determined by the state’s conflict‑of‑law rules of instituting bankruptcy proceedings, which in turn serves predictability of the law and its effectiveness.

Subject matter of the article concerns a phenomenon of a registring act of other people’s trade marks as their own by trademark trolls in order to call for payment for using such trademarks or to require the conclusion of appropriate licenses for using such trademarks from real owners of trademarks. Generally speaking, this unfair registring act is named as „trademark trolling”. Currently, registering a trademark in Poland is faster and cheaper than obtaining a patent right. It is caused by amendments to the Industrial Property Law Act that come into force on 15 April 2016. The amendment changed registration system of trademarks in Poland from a “research system” to an “objection system”. This change may significantly contribute to unfair registration of trademarks. The article also describes examples of infringements of trademark rights based on the most popular cases like: Tesla Motors Vs. Zhang Baosheng, trademark registration of “Viagra” –“Weige” in China and Never Give Up vs. Juiced Up and Juicelin. Finally, the article describes abilities to defend against trademark trolling acts in Polish legal system especially such as: an institution to raise an objection to registration of a trademark in bad faith, admissibility of recognition as an unfair act, based on the The Suppression of Unfair Competition Act, — a trademark registration for speculative purposes and, therefore, prohibition of using such trademarks registered by trademark trolls.

On 8 July 2017, the Principality of Monaco adopted — as Law no. 1.448 of 28 June 2017 on Private International Law — the Code on Private International Law. The law constitutes an exceptional example of codification, wherein the legislator of a non-EU member state was largely inspired by solutions adopted in the framework of EU regulations. The first part of this article is intended to present the most interesting of the solutions established in the Code with respect to issues pertaining to marriage. Accordingly, this part of the analysis concentrates on selected conflict of law rules concerning: the celebration of marriage, primary matrimonial regime, matrimonial property regime of the régime secondaire type, as well as divorce and legal separation. In the second part, an attempt was made to demonstrate the most interesting provisions of the Code as regards the law applicable to succession. Notwithstanding several reservations presented in the article, the quality of provisions of the Code on Private International Law pertaining to matrimonial and succession matters is very high. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that a range of modern solutions were introduced in response to the current needs of practice of legal relations in the aforementioned spheres.

The article discusses the 1985 Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Trusts and their Recognition as an instrument regulating conflict-of-law issues related to trusts, especially in continental legal tradition countries unfamiliar with this institution. It presents the convention's objectives, scope (excluding resulting and constructive trusts), the specifics of the trust definition, and the concept of "recognition". It analyzes the benefits and potential difficulties associated with the convention, including its significance for common law and civil law systems, and argues for Poland's accession to this regulation.

The article contains the Polish translation of the text of the Hague Convention of 1 July 1985 on the Law Applicable to Trusts and on their Recognition.