Copyright Act 1997, Protection of Collections and Databases

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 1 October 1997.

A database right rule binding public and private bodies.

As of 5 September 2026.

What it requires

Do not reproduce the whole or a substantial part of a collection of works or of data that is original by its selection, coordination, or arrangement, without the copyright owner's authorization.
No text-and-data-mining exception exists; a bulk copy of a protected collection for training a model needs its own defence, such as the quotation or teaching exceptions, or the copyright owner's permission.

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 6(1)(b) protects, as a derivative work, a collection of works and a collection of mere data (a database), in machine-readable or other form, provided the collection is original by reason of the selection, coordination, or arrangement of its contents.

This is ordinary compilation copyright rather than a sui generis database right of the kind the European Union grants, so a database that is not original in its selection or arrangement receives no protection under this section regardless of the effort spent assembling it, and copying an unoriginal collection of data is not an infringement under this provision.

The Act predates the text-and-data-mining exception found in some newer copyright statutes, so no machine-readable opt-out mechanism or text and data mining (TDM)-specific exception exists for a protected collection.

When LexLint raises it

crawls_web
trains_models

Read the law

Copyright Act, Chap. 82:80 (Act No. 8 of 1997, amended up to Act No. 5 of 2008), full text, WIPO Lex
a later Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2020 (Act No. 14 of 2020) exists but is not consolidated into the WIPO Lex text

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