The Official Gazette recently published the Copyright Law approved by the Council of Ministers at the end of last January, replacing the Copyright Protection Law issued by Royal Decree No. (M/41) of 1424 AH and repealing any provisions that conflict with it. The law will take effect 180 days after the date of its publication and comprises 61 articles that clearly define the scope of protection, the rights of authors, and the mechanisms for enforcing penalties.

The law defines a "work" as any creative work, whether literary, artistic, or scientific, regardless of its type, means of expression, or purpose, whereas a joint work includes works to which more than one natural or legal person contributes, while a collective work includes works organized, managed, and published by a natural or legal person in their own name, without specifying individual rights for each author.

The law also defines an audiovisual work as a work consisting of a series of interrelated images, often accompanied by sound, and presented through appropriate media, while a derivative work includes any work derived from a previous work, and an orphan work is any protected work, performance, recording, or broadcast program whose author or heirs are unknown or cannot be located. The law permits rental as a time-limited economic practice aimed at generating direct or indirect revenue.

The provisions of the law apply to Saudis and residents
The law stipulates that its provisions apply to works by Saudi authors and residents of the Kingdom, as well as works first published within the Kingdom or published abroad and subsequently introduced to the local market within 30 days, in addition to audiovisual works produced in the Kingdom, architectural works, and works of art incorporated into buildings and structures within the Kingdom, It also covers performing artists, producers of sound recordings, and broadcasting entities, as specified in the implementing regulations, and includes works protected under international conventions to which the Kingdom is a party.

An author has the right to request that their work be prohibited from being released or withdrawn from circulation for serious reasons, even if they have assigned the right of economic exploitation; the person to whom the right of economic exploitation has been assigned has the right to seek compensation as determined by the court.

Article 47 provides for the punishment of any person who commercially exploits copyright without authorization, or who publishes or distributes works not owned by him, or infringes copyright or circumvents technical protection measures, with imprisonment for up to one year and a fine of up to one million riyals, or either of these two penalties, with the penalty doubled in the event of a repeat offense during the period of serving the sentence or within three years thereafter.

The law also authorizes the Board of Directors of the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property to issue the implementing regulations within 180 days and to take the necessary decisions to enforce its provisions, thereby strengthening the protection of intellectual property and ensuring the rights of authors in the Kingdom.