UgandaCopyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, Chapter 222, news exception and quotation
Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, Chapter 222, ss. 6 and 14 (news exclusion and quotation)
In force since .
A snippet reproduction rule binding public and private bodies.
- Instrument type
- an act of a legislature
What it requires
- You need not license the news of the day: reports of fresh events or current information by the media, whether published in written form, broadcast, on the internet or by any other means, are excluded from copyright, so a bare news report is never a protected work, whichever outlet reports it first.
- You may quote a published work without the copyright owner's consent, including a quotation from a newspaper or periodical in the form of a press summary, if the quotation is compatible with fair practice, its extent does not exceed what is justified for the purpose of the work using it, and you acknowledge 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 beyond fair practice and the quoting work's own purpose, but that use, as against a traditional press summary, has not been tested in a reported Ugandan 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.
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
What this law does
Section 6(1)(d) excludes the news of the day, meaning reports of fresh events or current information by the media whether published in written form, broadcast, on the internet, or by any other means, from copyright protection outright, and section 6(2) makes the Government trustee of the excluded works for the public benefit: a bare news report is never a protected work under Ugandan law, whichever outlet reports it first.
Section 14(1)(b) separately lets any person, without the copyright owner's consent, quote a published work, including a quotation from a newspaper or periodical in the form of a press summary, where the quotation is compatible with fair practice, its extent does not exceed what is justified for the purpose of the work using it, and the source is acknowledged.
Neither provision is capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold beyond fair practice and the quoting work's own purpose, and whether either reaches a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as opposed to a traditional press summary, has not been tested in a reported Ugandan decision.
Uganda has no separate press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, no recognised hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright and unfair-competition law, and no located case law on hyperlinking or framed display.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app reuses other publishers' content.
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