Jamaica

Issued by the Chief Justice, this Practice Direction applies to all proceedings before the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Revenue Court, and both divisions of the Gun Court, and governs the use of generative AI tools by attorneys-at-law, parties, and self-represented litigants.

It requires a declaration, in a prescribed form, whenever any part of a document submitted to the Court was prepared with the assistance of generative AI, and requires that such content be thoroughly reviewed, verified, and approved before submission. It prohibits using generative AI to draft or alter affidavits or witness statements, to generate expert evidence, or to create material intended to be tendered into evidence unless the Court authorises it.

Submitting inaccurate, fictitious, or misleading generative-AI content can lead the Court to refuse the document, disregard the submission, or make a costs order, and non-compliance may constitute contempt of court or lead to referral to the General Legal Council's Disciplinary Committee.

The Act binds the Crown and any data controller, whether a person or a public authority, that processes personal data in Jamaica or, from outside Jamaica, targets data subjects who are in Jamaica; section 15 prohibits processing personal data without registering with the Information Commissioner.

Section 12 entitles a data subject to require that no decision significantly affecting them be based solely on automated processing, including profiling, of personal data used to evaluate matters such as their performance at work, creditworthiness, reliability, or conduct, and lets the Commissioner order a fresh decision where a data controller fails to comply.

Section 21(3) requires a data controller to report a contravention of the data protection standards or a security breach affecting personal data to the Commissioner within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. Section 24 imposes heightened conditions on processing sensitive personal data, a category that includes genetic and biometric data.

Section 31 bars transferring personal data outside Jamaica unless the receiving state or territory ensures an adequate level of protection, subject to exceptions including the data subject's consent.

Section 61 makes it an offence to knowingly or recklessly obtain, disclose, or procure the disclosure of personal data without the data controller's consent, and section 69 entitles an individual who suffers damage, or distress in specified circumstances, by reason of a data controller's contravention of the Act to compensation from that data controller.

Section 3(1) makes it an offence to knowingly obtain, for oneself or another person, any unauthorised access to a program or data held in a computer. Section 2(4) defines access as without authorisation whenever the person is not themselves entitled to control the access and does not have the consent of a person who is so entitled, without requiring that the person defeat a technical security measure, a broader trigger than Kenya's or several other jurisdictions' formulations.

Section 3(3) tiers the offence by forum and repeat conduct: on summary conviction before a Resident Magistrate, a fine not exceeding JMD 3,000,000 or imprisonment not exceeding three years for a first offence, rising to JMD 4,000,000 or four years where damage is caused, and JMD 5,000,000 or five years for a second or subsequent offence; on indictment before a Circuit Court, imprisonment alone up to seven, ten, or fifteen years across the same three tiers, with the fine left unspecified.

Section 15 lets the sentencing court, in the same criminal proceedings, order the convicted person to pay compensation to anyone who suffered loss from the offence, without prejudice to any other cause of action the victim may separately have; this is a court-ordered ancillary remedy rather than a freestanding civil claim. This Act repealed and replaced the Cybercrimes Act, 2010.

Section 52 excepts fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work for the purposes of research or private study from copyright infringement. Section 53 separately excepts fair dealing with a protected work for the purposes of criticism or review, and fair dealing with a protected work other than a photograph for the purpose of reporting current events, provided the dealing is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

Section 3(3A), inserted into the base 1993 Act by the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1999 (Act 29 of 1999), s. 3, provides that copyright subsisting in a literary work that is a compilation does not extend to the works, data, or other material the compilation comprises, and does not affect any copyright that may separately exist in that underlying material. The Act's marginal citation identifies the inserting amendment but does not itself state that amendment's own commencement date.

Jamaica accordingly protects a compilation's selection and arrangement as a literary work but confers no sui generis database right of the kind the EU recognises; the word "database" does not appear anywhere in the Act.

Section 6(8) provides that copyright protection does not extend to an idea, concept, process, principle, procedure, system, or discovery or things of a similar nature, so a bare fact or news item, as such, is never a protected work under Jamaican law whichever outlet reports it first.

Section 53(1)(b) separately lets a person deal fairly with a protected work, other than a photograph, for the purpose of reporting current events without infringing copyright, so long as the dealing is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement of the work and its author.