Part I: A business’s reputation as a legally protected personal interest
Reputation is a significant element of business value, often determining market position and counterparties’ trust. Its economic importance is widely recognised, yet losing it can have consequences far beyond financial figures. In a world of online reviews and social media, it is also among the easiest assets to lose.
Reputation between business and law
It is hard to imagine choosing a hotel, bank, restaurant, law firm, renovation contractor or IT supplier without at least glancing at online reviews. Search engines, social media and specialist review platforms are often our first stop. Others’ assessments and a producer’s or provider’s public reputation frequently influence decisions more than its own marketing.
A decade or two ago, opinions spread mainly locally through customers, counterparties and industry circles. Today, a social post, Google review or viral item can reach thousands or millions within hours.
In the digital economy, reputation is among the most valuable resources. Trust attracts customers, credibility draws partners, and market standing influences lenders and investors. Building it is lengthy and costly; loss can be sudden and hard to reverse.
It is more than marketing or PR: a genuine economic value affecting operations, competitive position and growth. Does law protect it as it protects property and other interests?
First we must ask whether a business can hold personal rights at all.
What are personal interests?
Article 23 of the Civil Code protects human personal interests, including health, freedom, honour, freedom of conscience, name or pseudonym, image, correspondence secrecy, inviolability of the home and scientific, artistic, inventive and rationalising creativity. The list is illustrative. Deliberately avoiding a definition or closed catalogue lets courts adapt to social, economic and technological change[1]. Recognition may require non-legal social, moral and customary standards. Despite definitional differences, these are non-pecuniary values closely linked to a particular entity and individualising it.
Case law contains surprising examples. Alongside dignity, health, honour and privacy, courts have recognised special human–animal bonds and family ties. Conversely, they have rejected driving eligibility, a professional career, creditworthiness and even marital fidelity obligations. The boundaries remain contested and evolving.
This living catalogue keeps Civil Code protection relevant to social media, review platforms and digital communication.
Are personal interests confined to individuals?
Article 43 applies individuals’ protection rules to legal persons mutatis mutandis. It underpins protection of companies’, foundations’ and other entities’ reputation and credibility. “Mutatis mutandis” requires adjustment to the entity’s nature, not direct application.
A legal person cannot have every human interest: health, life, bodily integrity, personal liberty or privacy in the individual sense. Yet it operates in law and commerce, builds relationships and trust and creates a market image, requiring comparable protection in that sphere.
The protected interests therefore depend on entity type: individual, company, foundation or association. For businesses, whether individuals, legal persons or legally capable organisational units, the operator’s nature determines scope. Infringement also differs. An individual may suffer humiliation or insecurity; a company cannot have hurt feelings. Its reputation and credibility, assessed externally, can nevertheless be infringed. Hence the distinction between internal honour, meaning dignity, and external honour, meaning good name and reputation.
Business entitlement to protection is now largely unquestioned. Its limits are less obvious. Reputation is especially valuable, yet its status as a protected interest was not always as clear as might be assumed.
Reputation in case law
Reputation is the established market perception of reliability, honesty, professionalism and credibility. It makes customers choose products, partners cooperate and financial institutions trust.
Case law now clearly treats good name, reputation or renown as protected[2]. Legal persons’ interests encompass non-pecuniary values connected with functioning and pursuing objectives, enabling proper activity and trust-based relationships[3]. Good name is the opinion held by customers, counterparties and other market participants[4].
Protection does not concern internal feelings or self-worth. Legal persons cannot experience injury, humiliation or mental suffering[5]. It principally concerns external honour, their image in others’ eyes[6], rather than subjective self-assessment.
Infringement occurs when information or evaluations objectively capable of undermining necessary business trust are disseminated[7], particularly allegations concerning reliability, products, services, performance of obligations, customer relations or finances[8].
False indebtedness reports are especially illustrative[9]. The Katowice Court of Appeal held that publicly portraying a business as an unreliable debtor itself infringes good name by attacking the trust underpinning commerce[10]. No actual loss of particular customers or partners need be shown[11]. A threat to reputation and credibility suffices.
Reputation is thus a legally recognised personal interest, not merely PR terminology. Protection safeguards trust, a basic condition for doing business.
Why does reputation matter more than ever?
Businesses operate digitally as well as commercially. A single post can challenge years of goodwill, making legal protection more important than ever.
Not every negative statement is unlawful. Businesses active in economic and public life must expect criticism. Their professional activity may justify broader criticism than for ordinary individuals[12]. Assessment must consider all circumstances, including content, context, purpose and dissemination. Freedom of expression nevertheless ends where false information or insufficiently fact-based allegations begin[13].
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This article opens a series on reputation protection in the digital era. If reputation is protected, where is the line between permissible criticism and unlawful infringement?
Next, we examine freedom of speech and respect for others’ personal rights: when criticism remains free debate and when it can create liability.
[1] “Personal interest” under Articles 23 and 24 is dynamic, depending on technological and civilisational development, social moral and legal principles, and social, economic and political relations. Infringement is similarly dynamic and context-specific: Supreme Court seven-judge resolution of 16 July 1993, I PZP 28/93, OSNCP 1994/1, item 2; PiZS 1994/2, p. 61, J. Skoczyński’s commentary; B. Janiszewska in J. Gudowski (ed.), Kodeks cywilny. Komentarz. Tom I. Część ogólna, part 1, Articles 1–554, Warsaw 2021, Article 23. Article 23 supplies neither a closed list nor a definition. Its non-pecuniary values concern individuality (name, pseudonym, image), sensitivity (honour, home), bodily integrity (health), achievements (creative work) and freedom (liberty and conscience), indicating where further interests may arise: Katowice Court of Appeal judgment of 10 April 2019, I ACa 298/18, LEX no. 3128131.
[2] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 3.09.2020, V ACa 29/20, LEX no. 3069836; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 13.04.2021, I ACa 93/21, LEX no. 3189041.
[3] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 10.04.2019, I ACa 17/18, LEX no. 2689776; judgment of the Regional Court in Warsaw of 12.06.2025, XXII GW 796/22, LEX no. 3941245.
[4] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lublin of 24.05.2022, I ACa 511/21, LEX no. 3390489; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lublin of 28.04.2020, I ACa 97/20, LEX no. 3029926.
[5] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 3.09.2020, V ACa 29/20, LEX no. 3069836; judgment of the Regional Court in Warsaw of 12.06.2025, XXII GW 796/22, LEX no. 3941245.
[6] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 13.04.2021, I ACa 93/21, LEX no. 3189041; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 3.09.2020, V ACa 29/20, LEX no. 3069836.
[7] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 3.09.2020, V ACa 29/20, LEX no. 3069836; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lublin of 24.05.2022, I ACa 511/21, LEX no. 3390489; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 10.04.2019, I ACa 17/18, LEX no. 2689776.
[8] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lublin of 28.04.2020, I ACa 97/20, LEX no. 3029926; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 13.04.2021, I ACa 93/21, LEX no. 3189041.
[9] See judgment of the Court of Appeal in Katowice of 10.06.2021, V AGa 35/19, Biul. SAKa 2021, no. 4, item 5; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lublin of 28.04.2020, I ACa 97/20, LEX no. 3029926; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 16.03.2021, V ACa 4/21, LEX no. 3171112.
[10] Judgment of the Court of Appeal in Katowice of 10.06.2021, V AGa 35/19, Biul.SAKa 2021, no. 4, item 5.
[11] Ibid.
[12] See Supreme Court judgment of 21.01.2025, II CSKP 142/23, OSNC 2025, no. 6, item 66.
[13] See Supreme Court order of 19.04.2022, I CSK 1217/22, LEX no. 3430673; Supreme Court order of 8.02.2023, I CSK 2995/22, LEX no. 3522754; judgment of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw of 22.07.2021, I ACa 401/21, LEX no. 3240353.
