Michał Pękała

Michał Pękała is an advocate, a partner in the technology department of Rymarz Zdort Maruta and the head of the Video Games & Entertainment practice.

Experience and education:

He is an expert in the protection of intellectual property rights, with a particular focus on copyrights, complex licensing mechanisms in cross-border transactions, the use of know-how and show-how, and the protection of intellectual property rights in JV projects in the high-tech, IT and defence sectors. Michał advises entities in the IT, high-tech and armaments sectors on the structuring and negotiation of JVs, as well as on executive and licensing agreements, with a particular focus on partnership agreements and cooperation between the Polish armaments industry and companies from other NATO countries.

He has many years of experience in advising entities from the video games industry such as developers, publishers, freelancers, YouTubers and influencers, as well as e-sports teams and industry investors. He specialises in providing comprehensive full-cycle legal advice on the creation and commercialisation of video games, as well as on the negotiation of joint venture projects, development and publishing agreements, financing transactions for gaming entities, and entities preparing to launch IPOs.

He is a WIPO legal expert on computer games and an advisor to the Indie Games Foundation. He is a regular speaker and participant at the largest Polish and international gaming conferences, such as the Games Industry Law Summit, Digital Dragons, the Games Industry Conference, Mastering the Game, Pixel Connect and More Than Just a Game. He regularly comments on current legal events concerning the video game market, among others, on the pages of Polski GameDev and in CD Action (an industry-recognised magazine). In the renowned The Legal 500 ranking, he was recognised as a recommended lawyer in 2022.

In 2011, he graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and completed a three-year course in American law at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 2012, he obtained an LL.M. (Master of Laws) degree in International Intellectual Property Law from the Chicago Kent-College of Law of the Illinois Institute of Technology, from which he graduated with honours. In 2013, he also completed postgraduate studies in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Warsaw.