Copyright and Related Rights Act, protection of databases as compilations
Copyright and Related Rights Act (Law No. 23/2010), ss. 3-6
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
- Reproducing the whole or a substantial part of an original database, one that is original in its selection or arrangement, without authorization is not covered by any exception described here.
- An unoriginal collection of facts or data carries no copyright protection under this Act, so scraping data from a database that is not itself original in selection or arrangement raises no claim under this Act.
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 4(a)(2) protects collections of data (databases), in whatever form, as derivative works, but only where they are original by their selection or arrangement. Section 5 confines that protection, and the protection of every other work class listed in section 3, to originally created products.
Section 6(a) then excludes any idea, procedure, system, method of operation, concept, principle, discovery or mere data from protection even where it is embodied in a work, so an unoriginal collection of facts scraped from a public database receives no copyright protection at all.
Maldives therefore protects a database only as a compilation under ordinary copyright originality standards, and confers no sui generis database right of the kind that would protect a database's contents regardless of originality.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
Courtesy English translation of the Copyright and Related Rights Act (Law No. 23/2010), WIPO Lex
the current Dhivehi text is amended through Act No. 31/2024 and this English translation reflects only the earlier 2010 version