According to the current Copyright and Related Rights Act of 4 February 1994, as amended, the so-called ‘right of citation’ is formulated which states:
It is permissible to cite excerpts of distributed works and distributed: visual, photographic or minor works in their entirety in works which constitute an independent whole, to the extent justified by the purposes of the quotation, such as explanation, polemic, critical and scientific analysis, teaching or genre rights.
It is permitted to use works for the purposes of parody, pastiche or caricature, to the extent justified by the rights of these genres of creation.
It is permissible to use a work inadvertently incorporated into other material as long as it is not relevant to that material.
1. Educational institutions, universities and scientific units within the meaning of the Act of 30 April 2010 on the principles of financing science (Journal of Laws of 2014, item 1620 and of 2015, item 249) may, for the purpose of illustrating the content provided for teaching purposes or for the purpose of scientific research, use the distributed works in the original and in translation and reproduce the distributed minor works or fragments of major works for this purpose.
2. Where works are made available to the public in such a way that everyone can access them from a place and at a time of their own choosing, the use referred to in paragraph 1 shall be allowed only to a limited circle of persons learning, teaching or conducting scientific research identified by the entities listed in paragraph 1.
1. It shall be permitted, for teaching and scientific purposes, to include distributed minor works or fragments of major works in textbooks, extracts and anthologies.
2. In the cases referred to in paragraph 1, the author shall be entitled to remuneration.
The scope of citing other people’s works and the way in which sources are indicated is standardised by the copyright law. Citing is legally permitted when the following conditions are met together:
Citing is legally permitted provided the author and source are acknowledged. The citation must be accompanied by bibliographical information in the form of a bibliographical footnote or annotation in the text under the ‘author – year’ system. The inclusion of the work from which the quotation is taken only in a general bibliography at the end of the book does not fulfil the condition of citing the creator and source.
ATTENTION! There is no legal limit to the length of a quotation, given in measurable units (e.g. number of characters, lines, etc.).