Copyright Act 1999, Fair Dealing and Criminal Liability for Infringement
Copyright Act, 1999 (Act No. 11 of 1999), ss. 41-42, 121
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.
Commencement not set.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- A use of a work is not infringing if it is fair dealing for criticism or review of that or another work, accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement, or fair dealing for reporting current events, or fair dealing for research or private study by an individual; training an AI model on copyrighted text does not fit any of those purposes as such, and no text-and-data-mining exception is available.
- Making for sale or hire, importing other than for private and domestic use, or possessing in the course of a business with a view to committing an infringing act, an object that is and that you know or ought reasonably to know is an infringing copy of a copyright work is an offence.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
Under s. 121(5)(a), a person convicted of an offence under s. 121(1) is liable to a fine of $5,000 for every infringing copy to which the offence relates, not exceeding $50,000 in respect of the same transaction, and to imprisonment for 12 months; under s. 121(5)(b), an offence under s. 121(2) or (3) instead draws a fixed fine of $50,000 and imprisonment for 12 months; under s. 121(5)(c), a second or subsequent such offence draws a fine of $100,000 and imprisonment for 2 years.
Penalty structure
Under s. 121(5)(a), a fine of $5,000 for every infringing copy to which an offence under s. 121(1) relates, not exceeding $50,000 in respect of the same transaction, plus imprisonment for 12 months. An offence under s. 121(2) or (3) instead draws a fixed fine of $50,000 and imprisonment for 12 months under s. 121(5)(b), rising to a fine of $100,000 and imprisonment for 2 years for a second or subsequent such offence under s. 121(5)(c). The Act states these figures in dollars, understood here as Fiji dollars.
- Rule
- Per violation only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Currency
- FJD
- Fixed cap
- 50,000
- Per violation unit
- Violation
- Per violation amount
- 5,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Fiji Police Force and the courts of Fiji, on prosecution for an offence under s. 121; a copyright owner may separately bring civil infringement proceedings
What it reaches
Obligation class
TDM
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
The Act received assent on 19 March 1999. Section 1(2) provides that it commences on a date or dates the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, rather than upon assent, and no specific commencement notice has been located.
Sections 41 and 42 permit fair dealing with a work for criticism, review, and news reporting and for research or private study by an individual, but the Act carries no exception for text and data mining, so training a model on scraped copyrighted text must fit one of those narrow purposes or infringe.
Section 2's definition of literary work includes a table or compilation, so a scraped compilation can attract copyright as a literary work if its selection or arrangement is original, but the Act creates no separate sui generis database right.
Section 121 makes it an offence, other than pursuant to a copyright licence, to make for sale or hire, import, possess in the course of a business, or otherwise deal with an object that is an infringing copy of a copyright work, and section 13 binds the State to the Act on the same terms as any other person.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Official English text, Copyright Act, 1999 (Act No. 11 of 1999), reproduced by WIPO Lex