Law No. 82 of 2002 on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright and Database Chapter (Book Three)
Law No. 82 of 2002 Copyright and Database Chapter (Book Three), on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, as amended by Law No. 178 of 2020
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 3 June 2002.
A database right rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 2 September 2026.
What it requires
- Treat a database compiled through the selection or arrangement of its contents as copyright-protected: do not reproduce or copy all or a substantial part of a database, in whole or in part, without the rights holder's authorization, even after the database has been published.
- Rely only on the Law's enumerated exceptions rather than a general fair-use or text-and-data-mining defense: personal non-commercial use, quotation or analysis for criticism, discussion, or information, and narrow teaching, library, and legal-proceeding copying, each on its own conditions. There is no exception addressed to training an AI model on copyrighted content or a compiled database.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
Imprisonment of not less than one month and a fine of EGP 5,000 to 10,000 for selling, renting, or circulating a protected work without the author's written authorization (Art. 181); a civil claimant may also seek conservatory measures (seizure, discontinuance of reproduction) from the court.
Penalty structure
Art. 181's base criminal band for unauthorized sale, rental, or circulation of a protected work, sound recording, or broadcast; the civil remedies (seizure, injunction, damages) available under Arts. 178-180 are not reducible to a single monetary cap.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 2 September 2026
- Minimum
- 5,000
- Currency
- EGP
- Fixed cap
- 10,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Egyptian Economic Courts (Law No. 120 of 2008), and since 2023 the Egyptian Intellectual Property Authority (Law No. 163 of 2023)
What it reaches
Obligation class
Prohibition, Licensing
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Book Three of Egypt's consolidated IP statute protects "databases, whether readable by computer or otherwise" as a category of copyrightable work (Art. 140(3)), not through a separate EU-style sui generis database right: protection rests on the database being an original compilation, the same footing as a computer program. Even where a personal-use or teaching exception would otherwise apply, the author may still prevent reproduction or copying of all or a substantial part of a database.
The Law's exceptions are enumerated rather than a general fair-use standard: personal non-commercial copying, analysis or quotation for criticism or information, short extracts for teaching, and narrow library, archiving, and legal-proceeding copying (Art. 171); none addresses text-and-data-mining or AI training. The Law has been amended several times since 2002, most recently up to Law No. 178 of 2020.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Law No. 82 of 2002 on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights
full English text as republished by WIPO Lex, WIPO's own legislative database