Overview

In the second half of 2008, a small but significant amendment was made to the Polish Civil Code. It introduced a comprehensive regulation of the rights to utility devices located on third party estates. Land easements and personal easements are well known to the Polish law and provisions regulating them are comprehensively formulated in the Civil Code. However, the issue of utility easements was until recently only partially regulated and many aspects of its actual functioning had to be interpreted by the courts. Many matters were unclear, such as the separate ownership of utility devices located on an estate, the time and conditions of such devices being transferred to the entrepreneur and settlements between the landlord who paid for the installation of such devices and its new owner.