Fałszerstwa dziedzictwa piśmienniczego w świetle prawa karnego i kryminalistyki

The article discusses the basic criminal-law aspects of written heritage protec-tion. A detailed analysis of respective legal provisions is provided so as to clas-sify literary heritage items as different types of legally protected objects accord-ing to their specific features or place of storage. Thus it is possible to propose criminal law provisions containing descriptions of types of offenses related to the forgery of such objects. The doctrinal legal analysis of the provisions also revealed problems related to the scope of definitions of particular protected objects and the application of conflict-of-law rules. Particular attention is paid to the change in the status and scope of criminal-law protection of an object of written heritage due to a change of the place of its storage (library, archive) or due to an increase in its value (e.g. historical value results from the passage of time or events taking place). In addition, the article presents the most important forensic methods used in detecting forged written objects. In the last part of the article, two cases of forgery are discussed, with the considerations focusing on the technical aspects of forgery.