Legal Opinion: Electronic title and mortgage register

On July 1, 2003 the Act on the transcription of the contents of the title and mortgage register onto a new register maintained on new electronic system will come into force. The existing title and mortgage records in written form will be put into an electronic format and be maintained by a newly-formed state agency controlling access to the contents of the title and mortgage register of real estate throughout Poland. All the necessary technical activities involved in making the transcription will be carried out by "data migration centers" located within the structure of provincial courts and supervised by judges responsible for the legal completion of the process. One should note that once the data migration process of the title and mortgage register records collected in a given court commences, it will not be possible to enter any changes to the records kept in writing. Applications for entry of any changes to the title and mortgage register will give any such mortgage registers priority in the data migration process. Therefore, one can assume that the pace for consideration of individual applications and entry of relevant changes into the register will depend on the amount of applications already filed and technical capacities of the data migration centers.Though there should be considerable advantages with the new system nor least its impact on the security of trade in real estate one should remember that the transcription process will take years. The authors of the Act believe that the transcription process (of more than 14 million existing title and mortgage register entries) should be completed within 10 years. For further information please contact Lejb Fogelman or Jarosław Grzesiak. Dewey Ballantine Grzesiak Limited Partnership. ul. Książęca 4 00-498 Warsaw Tel +48 22 690 6100, Fax +48 22 690 6222, www.deweyballantine.com