Compilation Copyright in Nepal: When a Database, Directory or Price List Is Protected
Compilation copyright in Nepal: why selection and arrangement decide protection for directories and databases, what stays free, and how data firms protect value.
A Nepali firm spends two years building the country's most complete supplier directory — verified contacts, categories, coverage maps. A competitor copies it wholesale and launches a lookalike. The firm's lawyer says the word that decides the case: compilation. Whether that word protects the directory, or abandons it, depends on one question nobody asked while building it.
Compilation copyright in Nepal protects selection and arrangement, never the facts themselves — which makes the way a database is built its real legal architecture.
In short
Compilation copyright in Nepal follows the Act's originality principle: a collection of data is protected only where the **selection or arrangement** of its contents is original — the curator's judgement, not the facts. Phone numbers, prices and addresses remain free for anyone to gather independently; wholesale copying of an original, curated compilation can infringe the compilation as a work. For Nepali data businesses the practical stack is layered: original curation for copyright, contract terms for users, trade-secret discipline for non-public data, and a registered trademark for the brand the dataset trades under.
The rule: protect the selection, not the facts
Nepal's Copyright Act, 2059 (2002) protects original works, and for collections the originality lives in the selection or arrangement of contents. A directory whose entries were chosen by judgement — which suppliers, verified how, categorised under what scheme, arranged for what use — has an author's hand in it, and that hand is what copyright protects. The underlying facts — the phone numbers, the prices, the opening hours — are never protected: anyone may collect the same facts independently.
This is the ideas-versus-expression boundary applied to data, and it cuts twice. The curator's structure is protected; the competitor who rebuilds the same dataset from scratch infringes nothing.
Compilation copyright in Nepal: the data product spectrum
The spectrum runs from strong to thin. A curated marketplace catalogue with written editorial criteria, an analytics product whose data model is itself an act of design, a photography archive arranged by an editor's eye — these sit at the protectable end. An alphabetical phone directory, a price list of the ten nearest petrol pumps, a listing generated automatically from a feed — these are thin or empty, because no selection judgement exists to protect.
The build-time question that decides it: could two people following the same rules have produced this exact output? If yes, there is no authorship to protect; if the product required someone's judgement about what belongs and what does not, the compilation has its author.
| Element | Protected? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Original selection of entries | Yes | The curator's judgement is authorship |
| Original arrangement or taxonomy | Yes | Structure chosen by judgement |
| Individual facts (numbers, addresses) | No | Facts are free for independent collection |
| Obvious or mechanical listings | Thin or none | No selection judgement to protect |
| Software running the database | Yes — separately | Copyright in the code, automatic |
| The dataset's brand name | Separate right | Trademark, registered at the DOI |
When scraping becomes infringement
Independent collection is free; wholesale copying is not. A competitor who scrapes an entire curated directory — taking the selection, the structure and the work of verification embodied in it — copies the protected compilation, not just the facts. The site's news-scraping guide walks the same analysis for media content, and the boundary is consistent: the more judgement the compilation embodies, the more clearly wholesale copying infringes.
The practical tip-off is fidelity. A rival whose 'new' product matches the original's errors, omissions and quirks has copied the work, not the facts — and quirks are evidence no independent collection would reproduce.
When your data product is copied: the response
The response runs on the same evidence the compilation was built with: the curation records showing selection judgement, the timestamps showing publication, and the side-by-side showing what was taken — including the errors and quirks that prove copying rather than independent collection. With that file, the ladder is familiar: a written demand, platform or host takedowns where the copy is online, and the Act's infringement remedies where it continues.
Contract adds a rung copyright cannot: if the copier was a registered user, the terms of use breach is often the cleaner claim — faster to prove, and priced by the agreement rather than by an argument over originality.
The protection stack for a Nepali data business
Because copyright's protection is partial, data businesses layer their defences. Contract does the daily work: terms of use that licence access, prohibit bulk copying and scraping, and bind registered users. Trade-secret discipline protects the data that was never public — verification notes, scoring models, internal datasets. Trademark protects the brand the dataset trades under, which for subscription products is often the most valuable asset on the shelf. Technical measures — API limits, watermarked records — make the contract enforceable in practice.
Curate deliberately
Written selection criteria and a designed taxonomy are what make the compilation copyrightable.
Put the contract in the funnel
Terms of use at registration: licensed access, no bulk extraction, no derivative directories.
Guard the non-public layer
Verification and scoring data under NDAs and access control — the trade-secret layer.
Register the brand
The dataset's name, cleared and filed, is what competitors cannot rebuild.
Want this handled for your brand?
IP Watch monitors new trademark publications in Nepal and alerts you to potentially conflicting marks — with the context needed to review them.
This article is general information, not legal advice.