Copyright Protection Law, exceptions to copyright
Law No. 7 of 2002, arts. 18, 20-21
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 August 2002.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- A reproduction or adaptation of a protected work for automated collection or model training must fit within the Law's narrow permitted-use list (personal use, non-profit teaching illustration, or adapting a lawfully-held copy of a computer program); Qatar has no text-and-data-mining exception, so bulk ingestion of copyrighted text for training does not fit these categories and requires the author's authorisation.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Publishing a work without the author's certified written authorisation, including a reproduction that falls outside the permitted-use exceptions, carries imprisonment of six months to one year and a fine of QAR 30,000 to 100,000, or either (art. 48).
Penalty structure
General infringement penalty under art. 48 for publishing a work without the author's authorisation; applies where a reproduction or use falls outside the permitted-use exceptions of arts. 18, 20, and 21.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Minimum
- 30,000
- Currency
- QAR
- Fixed cap
- 100,000
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 18 permits using a protected work without the author's authorisation for exclusively personal use (reproduction, translation, or quotation among other means), and for non-profit teaching illustration with source and author attribution. Article 20 lets the rightful owner of a copy of a computer program reproduce or adapt it, in a single copy, to the extent justified by the original purpose or for preservation, a right that lapses once possession of the program ceases to be lawful.
Article 21 permits reproduction of articles, short works, or extracts for teaching in non-commercial educational institutions, subject to conditions. Article 58 ties the Law's entry into force to the date of its publication in the Official Gazette, reported by WIPO Lex's bibliographic record for this version as 3 August 2002. Exceeding these exceptions is an ordinary infringement, punishable under article 48.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models