TunisiaCopyright Act, Facts Exclusion and Quotation and Press-Review Exception
Loi n° 94-36 du 24 février 1994 relative à la propriété littéraire et artistique, telle que modifiée et complétée par la loi n° 2009-33 du 23 juin 2009, arts. 1er et 11
In force.
A snippet reproduction rule binding public and private bodies.
- Instrument type
- an act of a legislature
- Obligation class
- Licensing, Attribution
What it requires
- You need not license the news of the day or miscellaneous facts that have the character of simple press information: a bare fact or news item is never a protected work, whichever outlet reports it first; official legislative, administrative and judicial texts and their official translations are outside protection too.
- You may take quotations and borrowings from a work already lawfully made accessible to the public, including from articles as press reviews, in the original or in translation, if the use conforms to fair practice, serves a scientific, educational or informational purpose, and mentions the source and the author's name where it appears in the source.
- Do not assume the quotation exception covers a systematic aggregator's headlines and snippets: it has no headline-length or short-extract cap and is not confined to the press, but that use, as against a traditional press review, has not been tested in a reported Tunisian decision.
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-10Intellectual Property
- MIT mitigations Draft
- 3.2Data Governance
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-007Legal and Contractual Frameworks for AI Systems
- AIR-DET-013Providing Citations and Source Traceability for AI-Generated Information
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
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
A fine of 1,000 to 50,000 dinars for exploiting a protected work without the authorization the Law requires, doubled on repeat offence with up to twelve months' imprisonment added (art. 52).
Penalty structure
Article 52 sets a fine of 1,000 to 50,000 dinars for exploiting a protected work without the required authorization, taking account of the exceptions in articles 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17 and 47 decies; on repeat offence the fine is doubled, to a ceiling of 100,000 dinars, and imprisonment of one to twelve months may be added or imposed alone as one of the two penalties.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- TND
- Fixed cap
- 100,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Rightholders sue for damages in the competent court (art. 51); infractions are recorded by judicial police officers, customs agents, economic control agents and sworn Ministry of Culture agents, who send the reports to the public prosecutor (art. 54).
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets fall within the "citations et emprunts d'articles sous forme de revues de presse" (quotations and borrowings from articles in the form of press reviews) that article 11 authorizes, or only a traditional press review?
- Which practices count as "bons usages" (good practice, the fair-practice condition) for a commercial service that reproduces press articles under article 11?
What this law does
Article premier extends copyright to every original literary, scientific or artistic work but states that protection covers expressions and does not extend to official legislative, administrative or judicial texts and their official translations, or to the news of the day or miscellaneous facts that have the character of simple press information; a bare fact or news item is therefore never a protected work under Tunisian law, whichever outlet reports it first.
Article 11 separately authorises quotations and borrowings taken from a work already lawfully made accessible to the public, including quotations and borrowings from articles in the form of press reviews, on condition that they conform to fair practice and are justified by a scientific, educational or informational purpose, used in their original version or in translation, and accompanied by mention of the source and the author's name where it appears in the source.
The exception is not capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold and is not confined to the press industry. Article 51 arms a rightholder with civil damages for a breach of copyright or related rights, and article 52 sets a criminal fine of 1,000 to 50,000 dinars, doubled on repeat offence with up to twelve months' imprisonment added, for exploiting a protected work without the required authorization. The sections this entry groups came into force on different days.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app reuses other publishers' content.
Back to the example · Lint your app
Page updated .