Sui Generis Database Right, Decreto-Lei n.º 122/2000
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
- Do not extract or re-use, for direct or indirect commercial purposes, a substantial part of a database protected by Portugal's sui generis database right or database copyright without the maker's or author's authorization.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Reproducing, disclosing, communicating, or making a protected database available to the public for direct or indirect commercial purposes without authorization is punished with imprisonment up to three years or a fine (art. 11.º, as amended by Decreto-Lei n.º 47/2023, art. 4.º).
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
A database whose selection or arrangement of contents is an intellectual creation is protected by copyright under Article 4.º(1) of Decreto-Lei n.º 122/2000, Portugal's transposition of the EU Database Directive (96/9/EC).
A separate sui generis right in Article 12.º gives the database's maker the right to authorize or prohibit extraction or re-utilization of the whole or a substantial part of its contents where obtaining, verifying, or presenting that content represented a substantial investment.
Reproducing, disclosing, communicating, or making available to the public, for direct or indirect commercial purposes, a database protected under Article 4.º(1) or Article 12.º without authorization is a criminal offense under Article 11.º, carrying imprisonment up to three years or a fine; Decreto-Lei n.º 47/2023 widened that offense in 2023 to also cover the sui generis right and to add making available to the public as a covered act, where the original 2000 text reached only a creative, copyright-protected database.
The decree does not state a general commencement day for the diploma; its Article 21.º backdates copyright protection under the diploma to 1 January 1998 but expressly excludes Article 11.º from that backdating, and no other commencement date for Article 11.º is stated in the text, though Decreto-Lei n.º 47/2023 cites the statute in its current wording as still applicable.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Diário da República Eletrónico
dre.pt, official ELI text of Decreto-Lei n.º 122/2000, with the amended Article 11.º text as carried in Decreto-Lei n.º 47/2023