Copyright Act, 2059, citation and current-information reproduction exceptions
Copyright Act, 2059 (2002), ss. 17, 20
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 15 August 2002.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 7 September 2026.
What it requires
- Citing a small portion of a published work, or reproducing portions of a newspaper or journal to disseminate current information, does not require the author's authorisation so long as the source and author are named and the use is not prejudicial to the author's economic right.
- Nepal has not enacted a text-and-data-mining exception, so training a model on scraped copyrighted text rests only on this general citation and current-information ground.
What it reaches
Obligation class
Attribution, 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.
Section 17 permits citing some portions of a published work for fair use, without the author's or copyright owner's authorisation, provided the source and author's name are mentioned and the citation is not prejudicial to the author's economic right.
Section 20 separately permits reproducing, broadcasting, or communicating some portions of a regular newspaper or journal for the purpose of disseminating current information, and reproducing or broadcasting an event to inform the general public, again without authorisation and subject to naming the source, unless the author has indicated the work is not to be reproduced.
Neither provision is framed as a text-and-data-mining exception, and no such exception exists in Nepali copyright law; training a model on scraped copyrighted text has no dedicated statutory shelter beyond these general citation and current-information grounds.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Internet Archive capture of the official English translation published by the Nepal Law Commission