RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS OF PARTIES TO THE RESEARCH CONTRACT (Prawa i obowiązki stron umowy o prace badawcze)

In this article author discusses legal aspects of research contracts in Polish civil law. The research contracts are usually contracted between academic bodies and undertakings which are focused on production based on modern technologies. Author focuses his attention on rights and obligations parties of research contracts and the object of the contracts mentioned here. In general, the object of the obligor's promise (the object of the contract) is “research work”. Contractor, on the other hand, is obligated to pay for the contracted work. The legal nature and the rules of civil law which should be applied to evaluate the legal consequences of the contracts mentioned above has been of particular interest to the author. The author expresses the point that the essential elements of the research contracts distinguish them from the contracts for a specific works (art. 627 et. seq. of the Civil Code) and contracts of mandates (art. 734 et. seq. of the Code mentioned above). The research contract can be classified as a mixed contract. Dealing with this problem, especially while we take into consideration Polish legal, social and economical conditions, seems really essential for the author.