TaiwanCopyright Act, fair use of a work
Copyright Act (著作權法), Arts. 65, 91
In force.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Test a collection or training use of another's copyrighted work against Article 65's fair-use factors (purpose and character, nature of the work, proportion used, and market effect) case by case; there is no separate text-and-data-mining exception or opt-out mechanism to rely on instead.
- A use exceeding fair use that reproduces a work without authorization risks criminal exposure under Article 91.
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.
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
Unauthorized reproduction infringing another's economic rights carries imprisonment up to three years, detention, or a fine up to NT$750,000 (Article 91, paragraph 1); reproduction made with intent to sell or rent carries imprisonment of six months to five years and a fine of NT$200,000 to NT$2,000,000 (Article 91, paragraph 2).
Penalty structure
NT$750,000 is the base fine cap for ordinary unauthorized reproduction (Article 91, paragraph 1); NT$2,000,000 is the cap for reproduction made with intent to sell or rent (Article 91, paragraph 2), the figure recorded here.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- TWD
- Fixed cap
- 2,000,000
Statutory damages
Where the injured party cannot prove actual damages, the court sets compensation at not less than NT$10,000 and not more than NT$1,000,000 on the seriousness of the matter, and up to NT$5,000,000 where the damaging activity was intentional and the matter serious (Article 88, paragraph 3). The two ceilings are caps the court sets within, not fixed sums. The Act does not address class actions.
- As of
- Currency
- TWD
- Per person minimum
- 10,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Public prosecutors and the courts
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a commercial bulk collection of another's copyrighted text to train a model satisfy the first factor of Article 65, 'The purposes and nature of the exploitation', which asks whether the exploitation is 'of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes'?
- Does copying a work whole into a training set weigh against the user under the factor 'The amount and substantiality of the portion exploited in relation to the work as a whole' in Article 65, and how does that factor weigh against 'Effect of the exploitation on the work's current and potential market value'?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 65 states that fair use of a work is not infringement and lists the factors for judging it, and article 91 punishes reproducing a work without authorization. Neither imposes a duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and neither carries a territorial clause of its own. The register or recordation log of plate rights that article 115-1 makes open to public inspection is outside the articles this row cites.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Article 65 makes fair use of a work a general defense to infringement of economic rights, judged on all the circumstances and in particular the purpose and character of the exploitation (including whether commercial or nonprofit educational), the nature of the work, the proportion exploited relative to the whole, and the exploitation's effect on the work's current and potential market value.
The Act sets no dedicated text-and-data-mining exception or machine-readable opt-out mechanism separate from this general standard, so a bulk-collection or model-training use of copyrighted text is tested by the same case-by-case Article 65 balancing as any other use.
Unauthorized reproduction infringing another's economic rights is punishable under Article 91 by up to three years imprisonment and/or a fine up to NT$750,000, rising to imprisonment of six months to five years and a fine of NT$200,000 to NT$2,000,000 where the reproduction is made with intent to sell or rent; Article 91 states that personal reference use or fair use of a work does not constitute infringement.
The Act provides that it takes effect from the date of its promulgation, apart from the exceptions it lists. The last revision of the whole Act was promulgated on . Under Article 13 of the Central Regulation Standard Act, a law that takes effect from its promulgation takes effect from the third day counting from the day of promulgation.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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