Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, protecção de compilações e exclusão das notícias do dia
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 17 April 2017.
A database right rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not reproduce a compilation, anthology, or systematic collection whose choice or arrangement of contents is itself an intellectual creation, without the rightsholder's authorization; São Tomé and Príncipe has no sui generis database right, so an unoriginal, purely factual collection of data is not itself protected against reproduction.
- News of the day and reports of events disclosed as simple information are outside copyright protection and may be reproduced freely.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Article 197 punishes the offenses defined in the Code's preceding articles, which includes unauthorized reproduction of a protected compilation, with imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of 150 to 250 days, doubled on a repeated offense; negligence is punishable with a fine of 50 to 150 days. Article 199 punishes selling, offering for sale, importing, exporting, or otherwise distributing a counterfeit or usurped work with the same penalties.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Direcção-Geral da Cultura and the Ministério da Cultura (public-domain works); ordinary civil and criminal courts
What it reaches
Obligation class
Access restriction, Attribution
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 3(1)(b) protects summaries and compilations of works, whether protected or not, such as collections, encyclopaedias, and anthologies, as original works only where the choice or arrangement of their contents constitutes an intellectual creation, and article 3(1)(c) extends the same standard to systematic or annotated compilations of official texts (conventions, laws, regulations, and administrative or judicial decisions).
The Code names no database as such and creates no separate sui generis right in an unoriginal, purely factual collection of data, so a compilation that is not itself an original creation is not protected against reproduction under this article. Article 7(1)(a) additionally excludes news of the day and reports of various events disclosed merely as simple information from copyright protection altogether, whatever their protected status otherwise.
Infringing a protected compilation is punished under the Code's own penalty provisions (article 197), which punish, with the same terms, unauthorized use of a counterfeit or usurped work under article 199. Article 229 puts the Code into force on the date of its publication, which the Diário da República issue carrying it dates to 17 April 2017.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017 de 19 de Abril de 2017, Diário da República n.º 47 de 17 de Abril de 2017