Copyright Law, Database Compilation Protection
Law No. 22 of 2006, Arts. 3-4 (Database Compilation)
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 database right rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- An app scraping a database from a Bahraini source may freely take the underlying facts or data themselves, but copying the compiler's creative selection or arrangement of that database's contents is copyright infringement if done without authorization.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Article 65(1) subjects anyone who infringes a copyright protected under the Law, without prejudice to a severer penalty under the Penal Code or another law, to imprisonment of no less than three months and no more than one year and a fine of no less than BD 500 and no more than BD 4,000, or either penalty.
Penalty structure
Fine of BD 500 to BD 4,000 under Article 65(1); the same paragraph also allows imprisonment of three months to one year instead of or in addition to the fine.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Currency
- BHD
- Fixed cap
- 4,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Bahraini courts, on a rightful owner's civil action or a criminal complaint
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 3(2) protects, as a derivative work, a collection such as an encyclopedia or a database in a computer-readable or other format, whether the collection is created through the selection or arrangement of its contents, without prejudice to protection of the original works the collection draws on.
Article 4 separately excludes abstract ideas, data, statutes, court judgments, and bare news of current events from protection, but its closing sentence extends protection to a collection of that excluded material where the compilation is itself creative in its selection or arrangement.
Because data itself is on that Article 4 exclusion list, extracting the underlying facts or data from a compiled database falls outside this protection even where the compilation's own selection or arrangement is protected.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Law No. 22 of 2006 on the Protection of Copyright and Neighbouring Rights
as amended up to Law No. 5 of 2014, full text reproduced by WIPO Lex