Copyright Act, 2003, fair dealing and database compilation
Copyright Act, 2003 (No. 22 of 2003), ss. 15, 52-54
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 5 September 2026.
What it requires
- A database (a compilation of data) is protected as a literary work only if the selection or arrangement of its contents is your own intellectual creation; the underlying data is not itself protected.
- Fair dealing with a work for research or private study, or for criticism, review, or (other than a photograph) reporting current events, does not infringe copyright if accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, but no text-and-data-mining exception exists for training on copyrighted text beyond that ground.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 15(2) makes a compilation of data or other material, described in the Act as a database, eligible for protection only as a literary work, and only where the selection or arrangement of its contents is the author's own intellectual creation; that protection does not reach the underlying data itself, and the Act creates no separate sui generis database right.
Section 52 lets a person deal fairly with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for the purposes of research or private study without infringing copyright, and section 53 lets a person, once a work has been lawfully disclosed, fairly deal with it for the purposes of criticism or review, or (other than a photograph) for reporting current events, without infringing copyright, so long as it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Official Gazette text of the Copyright Act, 2003, Government Printing Office, Antigua and Barbuda