Legal Q&A · 07

IT, Software & E-commerce — questions and answers.

44 answered questions on a subject we work on. Find related services in the catalogue: IT, Software & E-commerce.

Answered by , Czech and Slovak attorney, admitted to the Slovak and Czech Bars (SAK 300422 · ČAK 19654).

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Questions about IT, Software & E-commerce

  1. We have received an invoice for entering our trademark in an international register we do not recognise. Do we have to pay it? No, if you did not order such a service. A trademark is protected only by registration in the register of the office that registered it: the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic or the Czech Republic, EUIPO or WIPO. Fees for procedures before these offices are unrelated to private databases. An entry in a private “register” has no effect on the validity or scope of protection. Before making any payment, check the recipient and the trademark’s status in the official register.
  2. We sell in both Slovakia and Czechia. Is a Slovak or Czech trade mark sufficient, or do we need a European one? One national trade mark is not sufficient. A Slovak trade mark protects you in Slovakia, and a Czech trade mark in Czechia. For both markets, you can hold two national trade marks, a Slovak or Czech trade mark supplemented by an international registration designating the other country, or a single European Union trade mark valid throughout the Union. An EU trade mark is particularly worthwhile if you plan to enter other EU countries as well. However, an earlier trade mark from any Member State may block its registration. In that event, it can be converted into national applications while retaining the filing date.
  3. We are a Czech online shop and also sell to Slovakia. Must our website, terms and conditions, and instructions be in Slovak? In principle, yes. When selling to Slovak consumers, a Czech online shop is governed by Slovak law in consumer protection matters. Slovak law requires information and documents for consumers to be provided in Slovak. Another language the consumer understands, such as Czech, is permitted only with the consumer’s consent. Instructions for use and safety instructions must be in Slovak even if the customer agrees to Czech.
  4. A customer from Czechia or Hungary, where we do not deliver, wants to order from us. Must we sell to them, and can we charge a different price? You must not reject a customer simply because they are from another country. You must sell to them on the same terms you offer domestic customers, meaning delivery to an address or collection point in a country to which you deliver. You do not have to deliver to Czechia or Hungary. You may have different prices for different countries. However, a customer from another country must also be able to buy on the terms of your domestic offer.
  5. Can we charge a surcharge for card payments in our online shop or physical store, or accept cards only above a minimum amount? You cannot charge a surcharge for card payments in Slovakia. The law prohibits it for payments by both consumers and businesses. For another payment method, such as cash on delivery, you may charge consumers no more than the actual costs. From 1 May 2026, a store that records sales in an eKasa cash register must, subject to statutory exceptions, allow cashless payment for purchases exceeding 1 euro. A minimum amount for card payments therefore makes sense only if another cashless payment method is available below that amount. In Czechia, surcharges are prohibited for standard consumer cards.
  6. We sell used, second-hand or refurbished goods. Must we always be liable for defects for 24 months? No. For a used item, you may agree a shorter period of liability for defects with the consumer, subject to a minimum of 1 year in both Slovakia and Czechia. Without such an agreement, the standard 24 months also applies to used goods. Wear corresponding to the extent of previous use is not considered a defect, and you need not accept a claim concerning a specific known defect if you expressly draw it to the customer’s attention when the contract is concluded and the customer expressly and separately agrees to it.
  7. A customer purchased using an IČO and now wants to return the goods within 14 days as a consumer. Do we have to accept the return? Only if the customer bought the goods as a consumer, meaning for private purposes. An IČO on the invoice does not in itself exclude the right to withdraw from the contract within 14 days, because a consumer is a natural person who is not acting in the course of their business when making the purchase. However, if the customer bought the goods for business purposes, or if the purchaser was a company with legal personality, there is no statutory right of withdrawal and any return depends on your terms and conditions.
  8. Does our online shop have to be accessible to people with disabilities from 2025? Does this also apply to a small business? Yes, if the online shop sells to consumers and the business is not a microenterprise. From 28 June 2025, the Act also applies to online shops, but not to services provided by microenterprises, meaning businesses with fewer than 10 persons and annual turnover or an annual balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros. A small business above this threshold is not exempt. It may apply the requirements to a limited extent only if meeting them would fundamentally alter the nature of the service or impose a disproportionate burden. However, it must assess this and notify the inspection authority.
  9. Who owns the copyright in software created for me by a supplier? An author's economic rights are non-transferable. A program commissioned directly from its author generally falls under the employee-work regime, and the customer exercises the rights unless the parties agree otherwise. Where a company supplies the software, however, the customer does not automatically obtain every entitlement: rights from its employees and subcontractors must be checked, and an appropriate licence or an assignment of the right to exercise economic rights must be agreed. The contract should also address source code, modifications and further licensing.
  10. How long does a customer have to return goods bought online? A consumer may withdraw from a distance contract with an online shop within 14 days without giving a reason. For goods, the period starts on receipt. Statutory exceptions include custom-made goods and unsealed goods protected for hygiene reasons. If the seller fails to provide proper withdrawal information, the period extends by up to 12 months.
  11. When does the AI Act apply, and who does it cover? The AI Act applies progressively: the first general provisions and prohibitions from 2 February 2025, rules for general-purpose AI models from 2 August 2025, with 2 August 2026 remaining the general application date. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, however, postponed Chapter III, Sections 1 to 3, except Article 6(5): until 2 December 2027 for high-risk systems under Annex III and until 2 August 2028 for systems linked to regulated products under Annex I. It covers providers and businesses deploying AI; their specific duties depend on their role and the system.
  12. What duties apply when I process customers' personal data under the GDPR? You may process customer personal data only with a valid legal basis, most commonly contract performance, a legal obligation, legitimate interests or consent. Core duties include informing individuals, enabling them to exercise their rights, securing the data appropriately and notifying the supervisory authority of serious breaches without undue delay. The scope depends on what you process and why.
  13. Do I need a non-disclosure agreement, and what should it contain? Trade secrets are protected directly by law, and their violation constitutes unfair competition even without an agreement. An NDA still makes sense: it precisely defines confidentiality, duration and sanctions, making proof and enforcement considerably easier. A clear definition of confidential information, the confidentiality period and a written contractual penalty are central.
  14. Someone registered a domain using my name or brand. What can I do? Domain registration alone does not permanently defeat your earlier rights. If the domain infringes your trademark or business name, you can rely on trademark rights or unfair competition protection and seek an end to its use, compensation and potentially transfer of the domain. The approach depends on whether you have a registered mark and how the domain is actually used.
  15. What information must an online shop provide, and how is an order placed? As an information society service provider, an online shop must keep seller identification permanently accessible: business name, registered office, contact details, register information and supervisory authority. Before submission, customers must be able to check and correct errors; after receipt, the order must be confirmed electronically without delay. Further information duties apply to consumers.
  16. Can the Slovak Trade Inspection fine our online shop from screenshots alone, without an on-site inspection? Yes. Act No. 108/2024 Coll. expressly permits remote supervision, including checks of online interfaces. Inspectors take screenshots and can conduct the entire inspection without visiting your premises. They serve commencement notices and records through your slovensko.sk electronic mailbox, so you learn of the inspection only if someone monitors it. Fines concern what actually appears online, most commonly unfair terms and missing consumer information.
  17. How should we display discounts, and what is the lowest price in the previous 30 days? Every goods price reduction announcement must state the previous price, meaning the lowest price at which you sold the goods in the 30 days before the reduction (Section 7 of Act No. 108/2024 Coll.). The discount must also be calculated from that price, not the regular pre-promotion price. The Slovak Trade Inspection actively checks shops and websites, comparing price records with displayed prices. A struck-through price inconsistent with the history can lead to a fine.
  18. We sell online courses. Can our terms say course fees are non-refundable? Not in that form. A consumer buying remotely has a 14-day withdrawal right that cannot be waived in advance, so the clause is invalid and may attract a fine. The law offers digital content sellers a lawful route: the right ends when supply begins if the customer expressly consented, acknowledged being informed of the loss of that right and received confirmation. This is addressed through checkout, rather than a sentence in the terms.
  19. Do we have to verify reviews on our online shop? You do not have to verify reviews: the duty is to provide information. If you display reviews, explain whether and how you ensure they come from real customers. If you do not verify them, say so. Truthfulness is the boundary: labelling reviews as verified without real checks, or publishing commissioned fake reviews, is an unfair commercial practice. The same principle applies in Slovakia and Czechia.
  20. How many days do we have to resolve a defect complaint, and what if we miss the deadline? For goods, the seller must repair or replace the item within a reasonable period not exceeding 30 days after the defect is reported. A longer period is permitted only for an objective reason beyond the seller's control. The same cap applies to the period stated in the defect acknowledgement and to remedying a service defect. If the deadline expires without a remedy, the buyer may seek a proportionate price reduction or withdraw from the contract. The supervisory authority may penalise handling failures regardless of whether the defect actually existed.
  21. What must we do to make shop and workplace CCTV lawful? CCTV is lawful when its legal basis is documented in advance, generally legitimate interests under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, and everyone entering the monitored area receives the required information. A balancing test comparing your interests with the privacy intrusion must exist before cameras start operating. At work, Section 13(4) of the Labour Code additionally requires prior consultation with employee representatives on the monitoring mechanism and notification to employees.
  22. Someone has applied for a trademark similar to ours. How and by when can we oppose it? Opposition is filed with the Slovak Industrial Property Office within three months of publication of the application in its bulletin. The deadline is strict: later additions, expanded grounds and evidence are disregarded, so the filing must be complete from the outset. Monitoring competitors' applications continuously is worthwhile. After registration, the longer route of an invalidity application remains.
  23. We have a registered trademark but do not use it. Can we lose it? Yes. If a mark has not been genuinely used in Slovakia for an uninterrupted period of at least five years, the Office revokes it on a third party's application. The law presumes non-use, which the owner must rebut. The same rule applies to EU marks under Article 58(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1001. An unused mark also weakens as an enforcement tool: in opposition proceedings, the other party can demand proof of genuine use.
  24. Is an accept-or-leave cookie banner lawful? No. Cookie consent must satisfy the GDPR and be freely given; accept or leave is not a real choice. The European Data Protection Board's consent guidelines expressly state that access to content must not depend on cookie consent. A banner therefore needs an equally prominent reject button on its first layer, and the website must work after rejection. The paid alternative, pay or consent, remains disputed.
  25. Nobody enters a name or email on our website. Do we need to address the GDPR at all? Generally yes, for three reasons. Under EU case law, a visitor's IP address is personal data if you can identify them with help from others, as is usually the case with ordinary server logs. The GDPR expressly treats pseudonymous identifiers, such as analytics cookies, as personal data: anonymity must be achieved rather than assumed. Embedded third-party scripts may create joint controllership where you jointly determine the purposes and means of specific operations. Depending on the setup, the third party may instead be a processor or an independent controller. The first question is therefore technical: what does your website load in the background?
  26. A client refuses to pay for standby because no intervention was needed. Are they right? Generally not. Under service contracts, standby fees pay for reserved capacity and readiness to respond within the agreed time, which has value even in a month without incidents. Entitlement depends on agreed and actually maintained availability rather than intervention numbers. In a dispute, the provider must prove availability, making duty schedules, availability records and responses to requests decisive.
  27. We are planning a purchase-linked consumer competition. Do we need a licence, and who pays tax on prizes? No licence is needed. A purchase-linked competition is a promotional competition expressly excluded by gambling law, provided it promotes sales, is not a separate business and requires no stake; payment for goods is not a stake. The rules are a consumer contract with corresponding requirements. For tax, the organiser withholds tax on cash prizes; winners declare non-cash prizes, while prizes within the statutory limit are exempt. Czech promotional competitions without a stake likewise require no licence.
  28. Can we send newsletters to existing customers without their express consent? Yes, for existing customers, subject to the statutory exception. The Electronic Communications Act requires prior demonstrable consent for email marketing. Consent is unnecessary when promoting your own similar goods or services to people whose address you obtained during a sale, provided they can refuse easily and free of charge both when you collect it and in every message. Bought or borrowed databases do not qualify. You also need a GDPR legal basis, usually legitimate interests, with a right to object at any time.
  29. Must an influencer label our post as advertising, and who is liable if they do not? Yes. A paid or otherwise rewarded post is advertising and a trader's commercial practice. If its promotional nature is unclear, the Consumer Protection Act treats it as an always-prohibited unfair commercial practice. The trader whose product is promoted bears primary responsibility, but the law expressly also covers anyone acting in its name or on its behalf, including the influencer. Labels must be understandable and visible without expanding the post. The contract should expressly regulate labelling, content approval and sanctions.
  30. What must appear on a company website even if we do not sell through it? Generally, these duties apply. A company website is an information society service even without sales if it promotes the business. The Electronic Commerce Act requires the business name and registered office, email and phone, register and entry number, tax identification number if VAT-registered, and the supervisory authority's name and address. The Commercial Code adds the company identification number and legal form. Details must be easily and permanently accessible, not supplied only on request. GDPR transparency and cookie rules also apply.
  31. Our system implementation is late. May we withdraw only from the part the supplier has not delivered? Yes; in commercial relations the law expressly provides for it: where the delay concerns only part of the obligation, withdrawal is available only in respect of that part. You may withdraw from the entire implementation contract where the parts already delivered evidently have no economic significance for you without the remainder, or where the failure to perform as a whole amounts to a material breach. Before withdrawing, check whether the supplier is in delay because of your own failure to cooperate, and define the scope of the withdrawal precisely in the notice.
  32. The new system does not work with our older software. Is the implementation supplier liable for this? It depends on what the contract defined as the result and on who warned whom. If the supplier could, exercising professional care, have identified that your materials or instructions for the integration were unsuitable and failed to warn you, it is liable for defects caused by their use. If it warned you and you insisted in writing on the original solution, it is not liable for those defects. If the integration depends on cooperation which, under the contract, you were to procure, even through another supplier, the implementation supplier is not in delay in so far as it cannot perform for want of that cooperation.
  33. The supplier of our new system will be migrating our customer data. Do we need a GDPR contract with it? Yes, where the supplier handles personal data of customers or employees on your behalf during migration, testing or support. It is then a processor, and the processing must be governed by a contract with the content prescribed by Article 28 GDPR, in writing, including in electronic form. Among other things, the contract must provide that the supplier processes the data only on your documented instructions and that it returns or deletes the data once the services end. The duty to select a supplier offering sufficient guarantees rests with you as controller.
  34. A trademark owner is demanding that we hand over our domain. Must we? Not automatically. A trademark owner may prohibit the use in the course of trade of an identical sign for identical goods and services, and of a similar sign where there is a likelihood of confusion, but not to the detriment of rights acquired before its application was filed. In alternative dispute resolution for a .sk domain it is also examined whether you have a right or legitimate interest in the domain and whether you acquired and used it in good faith. Do not ignore the demand, but nor should you comply with it before checking your position.
  35. We are buying an e-shop. How do we make sure the domain passes to us as well? It depends on whether you are buying the company or its business, and on who is actually registered as the holder of the domain. On a purchase of an ownership interest, the domain remains with the company if the company is its holder. On a purchase of the business, the rights covered by the sale pass to the buyer, but the domain registry will record a change of holder only on an application by the existing holder, made through a registrar and with the consent of the new holder. The contract must therefore oblige the seller to take that step, and payment must be tied to it.
  36. Our client is not supplying materials or testing during software development. Must we still meet the deadline? While you are waiting for cooperation the client owes under the contract, it is the client, not you, who is in delay. The Commercial Code states expressly that a debtor is not in delay where it cannot perform as a result of the creditor's delay, and a client who fails to provide the necessary cooperation is a creditor in delay. If the client fails to provide that cooperation even within an additional reasonable period, you may withdraw from the contract and claim the price reduced by what you have saved. What matters, therefore, is whether the cooperation is identified in the contract and whether you are notifying its absence in a demonstrable way.
  37. May our licence terms prohibit a back-up copy and the study of our software? Not entirely. Copyright law allows a lawful user, without the author's consent, to make a back-up copy of a program, to study and test how it functions, and to decompile the code to the extent necessary to achieve interoperability with another program. The EU directive which the Act implements declares contractual provisions contrary to those entitlements void from the outset. Licence terms should therefore prohibit what the law does not give the user: copying beyond the licence, disclosure of information obtained by decompilation, and its use to develop a similar program.
  38. A customer wants to resell a licence to our software. May we prohibit that? It depends on what you sold the customer. If it received a copy of the program with a licence for an unlimited period for a one-off price, the author's right to control further sale of that copy has been exhausted within the EU, and a prohibition in the licence terms will not prevent it. The customer must, however, make its own copy unusable and may not divide a multi-user licence. With a subscription, a licence limited in time or SaaS, no sale of a copy takes place and assignment of the licence is subject to the contract and to the author's consent.
  39. A customer is leaving our SaaS service for another supplier. Must we assist with the switch? Yes. Since 12 September 2025, the EU Data Act has applied, requiring providers of data processing services, including SaaS, to enable a customer to switch to another provider and to port its exportable data. The contract must provide for a notice period for initiating the switch of no more than two months, a transitional period of no more than 30 days, and a data retrieval period of at least 30 days. From 12 January 2027 you may no longer charge any fees for switching, unless the service is a custom-built one under Article 31.
  40. Can we increase the subscription price for our SaaS customers during the term of the agreement? Only if you reserve the right in advance in the agreement and observe the statutory limits. Against consumers, a term allowing the trader to change the contractual terms unilaterally without a ground agreed in the agreement, or to increase the price substantially without the consumer being able to withdraw, is unfair. For open-ended agreements the Act expressly permits a reserved change of terms where the trader gives written notice a reasonable time in advance and the customer may terminate free of charge as of the date the change takes effect. Between businesses the agreement governs; in Czechia the Act itself sets out when a supplier may change its standard terms.
  41. The supplier failed to meet the SLA. Is a credit all we get, or may we also claim damages? It depends on how the credits are constructed in the contract. If they amount to a contractual penalty, you will not obtain damages for the same breach under the Civil Code unless the contract expressly permits a claim for loss exceeding the penalty. If the credits are a reduction of the price for a service level not delivered, they do not in themselves exclude damages, although contracts often limit them by a sole-remedy clause. A complete advance waiver of damages is not permitted by the Commercial Code, and the validity of caps on damages has not been definitively resolved.
  42. May we reject a complaint where the customer has no receipt or original packaging? Not on that ground alone. The Civil Code governs where and how a defect may be reported; it does not make production of a receipt a condition, and a purchase in an e-shop can generally be verified from your own order and payment records. The law does not link the original packaging to liability for defects, so a term requiring “complaints only in the original packaging” limits the consumer's rights. You may reject a complaint about an item the customer demonstrably did not buy from you, or about a defect for which you are not liable, and you must notify the reasons in writing.
  43. Who pays the postage when a customer makes a defect complaint about goods from an e-shop? On a justified complaint, the seller. The Civil Code expressly provides that the seller bears the cost of taking over an item for repair or replacement and delivers the repaired or replacement item back to the buyer at its own expense; the buyer is also entitled to reimbursement of the costs reasonably incurred in connection with reporting the defect. Where the seller is not liable for the defect, that entitlement does not arise. Czech law leads to the same result.
  44. Which sentences in an e-shop's terms and conditions are invalid against a consumer? Invalid terms are unfair terms, that is to say provisions causing a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the detriment of the consumer (Section 53 of the Civil Code). The law gives an illustrative list of them, and in e-shops they most often concern limitations of liability for defects and for damage, unilateral changes to the terms or the price, and disproportionate sanctions. Such a sentence does not bind the customer, and its mere use may attract a fine from the Slovak Trade Inspection. In the Czech Republic an unfair stipulation is disregarded unless the consumer invokes it.

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