Under No. 344/2007, an amendment was published in the Collection of Acts, which amends Act No. 513/1991 Coll., the Commercial Code, as amended, and Act No. 200/1990 Coll., on Offences, as amended. The amendment in question comes into effect on 1 March 2008 and brings some interesting changes related to doing business on the internet. However, the changes made do not relate only to on-line traders, but to all entrepreneurs.

From the perspective of doing business in the internet environment, an interesting change was made to the provision of Section 13a(1) of the Commercial Code regulating business documents. The aforementioned provision now reads as follows (amendments are highlighted in bold): “Every entrepreneur is obliged to state on all orders, business letters, invoices, contracts and within information made publicly accessible by means of remote access (hereinafter “internet pages”) the data concerning its business name, name or title, registered office or place of business and identification number; entrepreneurs registered in the Commercial Register also the data concerning this registration, including the file reference, and entrepreneurs not registered in the Commercial Register also the data concerning registration in another register in which they are registered. Data concerning the amount of registered capital may be stated in these documents and on internet pages only if it has been fully paid up.” The legislator thus creates a relatively interesting legislative abbreviation “internet pages” and expressly prohibits anonymous presentation of entrepreneurs in the internet environment. Breach of the obligations set out in Section 13a(1) constitutes an offence.

For information, we also state that within the framework of the amendment to the Commercial Code in question, further changes were made to the legal regulation of the Commercial Register, in the area of doing business by foreign natural persons in the Czech Republic, in the provisions on so-called financial collateral, and minor amendments were also made to the legal regulation of joint-stock companies.

In connection with the amendment to the Commercial Code, the Act on Offences was also amended, specifically its provision of Section 24(1)(c). Thus, breach of the obligation “to submit a proposal for registration, change or deletion of a registration in the Commercial Register or to deposit a document in the collection of documents” and breach of the obligation “to use a business name when doing business, and if not having one, a forename and surname or name” now also constitutes an offence for which an administrative sanction may be imposed. For breach of these obligations, a fine of up to CZK 50,000 and a prohibition of activity for up to 1 year may be imposed.

The number of legislative changes is not decreasing significantly, so next time we will focus on the planned fundamental amendment to the Act on Consumer Protection (Act No. 634/1992 Coll., as amended) and other related regulations, which is currently in the legislative process.

This text was translated from Czech to English using an AI translator.