GhanaCopyright Act, Database Protection
Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690), ss. 1, 19 (Database Protection)
In force since .
A database right rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Access restriction
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not reproduce a database whose selection or arrangement of contents is an original intellectual creation without the rightsholder's authorization; Ghana has no sui generis database right, so an unoriginal, purely factual database is not itself protected on that basis.
- Do not rely on the personal-use exception to copy the whole or a substantial part of a database in digital form; that exception does not extend to a database.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-09Information Security
- GAI-RISK-12Value Chain and Component Integration
- OWASP LLM Top 10
- LLM03:2026Excessive Agency
- OWASP Agentic Top 10
- ASI03Identity and Privilege Abuse
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-018Agent Authority Least Privilege Framework
- AIR-PREV-023Agentic System Credential Protection Framework
- ETSI EN 304 223
- 5.1.2-6Access the AI system gets to other systems and data sources is minimal and risk assessed.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
A person who infringes a right protected under the Act commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than one thousand penalty units and not less than five hundred penalty units, or imprisonment of not more than three years, or both; a continuing offence carries a further fine of not less than twenty-five penalty units and not more than one hundred penalty units for each day it continues (s. 43).
Penalty structure
Section 43 (Penalty for copyright offence) sets a fine of not more than one thousand penalty units and not less than five hundred penalty units, or imprisonment of not more than three years, or both, with a further fine of twenty-five to one hundred penalty units for each day a continuing offence persists. One penalty unit equals twelve Ghana cedis under the Fines (Penalty Units) Act, 2000 (Act 572), as recorded by the Ghana Revenue Authority, making the base ceiling twelve thousand Ghana cedis.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- GHS
- Fixed cap
- 1,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Copyright Office; prosecuted before the ordinary criminal courts
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a website database whose contents are assembled from user submissions and listed in date order meet the test that the "selection or arrangement of contents constitutes intellectual creations", so that it is a literary work protected under the Act?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 1 makes a work eligible for copyright if it is original and fixed, and section 19(2)(c) takes reproduction of the whole or a substantial part of a database in digital form outside the personal-use permission. The Act has no database-specific record duty, and neither cited section requires a log or record to be made, kept or produced. The eligibility test in section 1 (a citizen or resident author, first publication in Ghana, or a treaty obligation) describes protected works, not a hook for the person copying.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
The Act's definition of a literary work, which section 1 makes eligible for copyright, includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, time tables, anthologies, databases, or a compilation of data or other material, whether in machine-readable form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of contents constitutes an intellectual creation.
Ghana has no separate sui generis database right: a database that is a mere collection of facts, without an original selection or arrangement, is not protected on that basis alone. Section 19's personal-use exception, which otherwise permits reproduction for a person's exclusive personal use, expressly does not extend to reproducing the whole or a substantial part of a database in digital form.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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