Copyright Act, Scientific Research Text and Data Mining Exception
Federal Act on Copyright and Related Rights (URG/LDA), SR 231.1, Art. 24d
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 since 1 April 2020.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Reproduction of a work for scientific research is permitted only where the copying uses a technical process and the work can be lawfully accessed; this ground does not extend to copying computer programs. This is narrower than a general text-and-data-mining exception, so training a model on scraped copyrighted text rests on this ground only where a genuine scientific-research purpose is met, and commercial or non-research training falls outside it.
- A quotation from a published work is permitted only as an explanation, reference or illustration, to the extent justified for that purpose, with the source and author named.
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 24d permits reproducing a work for the purposes of scientific research where the copying is due to the use of a technical process and the works to be copied can be lawfully accessed, with copies made under the article retainable for archiving and backup purposes once the research concludes; the article does not apply to copying computer programs.
Separately, Article 25 permits quoting a published work where the quotation serves as an explanation, reference or illustration and its extent is justified for that purpose, with the source and, where given, the author's name cited.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Federal Act on Copyright and Related Rights, official English translation, Fedlex