Analysing digital property law in Cape Verde

“Digital property” is not a single statute in Cabo Verde. No law checked for this page creates a unified category of ownership for digital assets. What exists is a set of verified instruments that each protect a different slice of the digital economy: intangible creations, online commerce, electronic procedure and the .cv domain system. This page analyses how far each one reaches, and states plainly where the gaps are.

Digital creations: copyright and the Industrial Property Code

Copyright. Literary, artistic and scientific works are protected by Decreto-Legislativo No. 1/2009 of 27 April (the Copyright Law). Its first amendment, Decreto-Legislativo No. 2/2017, was adopted precisely because of “new technological realities”: it updates the definition of communication to the public to cover making works available online, treats temporary and permanent reproduction alike, clarifies how moral rights are exercised after the author’s death and aligns the law with the WIPO digital copyright treaties (WCT, WPPT, Beijing, Marrakesh).

Computer programs and trade secrets. The new Industrial Property Code (Decreto-Legislativo No. 2/2025, in force from 2 June 2026) acknowledges a separate regime for software: its patent rules refer to “the legislation in force on the legal protection of computer programs”, including its provisions on decompilation and interoperability, so computer programs are protected by their own legislation, outside the patent rules for those acts. For businesses, the Code also gives reinforced protection to trade secrets (know-how and confidential business information), covering illicit acquisition, use and disclosure, and protects semiconductor topographies (10 years), which matter to hardware-adjacent digital products.

Domain names: a registry, not yet a verified statute

The .cv country code top-level domain is recorded in the IANA root database since 21 October 1996; the registry information points to dns.cv, with WHOIS at whois.nic.cv and RDAP at rdap.nic.cv, and IANA’s report records the redelegation of .cv to the Agência Nacional das Comunicações in 2009. What this page could not verify is a national statute governing .cv registrations or a published dispute-resolution policy for .cv domains: the digital services and e-commerce law does not contain rules on domain names, and no UDRP-equivalent framework for .cv was found in the sources checked. Practical disputes therefore run through ordinary contract and trademark law (a registered trademark is ground for refusing or cancelling confusingly similar company names under the Industrial Property Code) and through whatever rules the registry itself publishes.

Online commerce and data: the 2024 digital services law

Lei n.º 41/X/2024 of 12 August (in force sixty days after publication, from October 2024) approves the legal regime for digital services and electronic commerce. Verified in its text: it applies to intermediary service providers established or operating in Cabo Verde regardless of where they are seated; defines electronic signatures; rules the liability of intermediaries (no general duty to monitor); requires registration of intermediary providers in a registry kept by the Agência Reguladora Multissectorial da Economia (ARME), the central supervisory authority; orders order-confirmation and a consumer’s right of withdrawal with refund within 14 days; and subordinates privacy policies to the general personal data protection regime, Lei n.º 133/V/2001, as amended in 2013 and 2021, cited inside the law itself. The Constitution adds the data-protection guarantees of articles 45 and 46 (access, rectification and habeas data), verified in the consolidated text on the Parliament portal.

Electronic procedure: courts and digital acts

The judiciary’s digital layer is Lei n.º 33/VIII/2013 of 16 July, which governs the use of electronic means in the processing of court cases, communication of acts and the filing of procedural documents, the legal basis that allows litigation over digital assets to be conducted electronically. Together with the 2024 e-commerce law’s recognition of electronic signatures, the formal tools for concluding and enforcing digital transactions exist in the verified framework.

The honest gaps

Based strictly on the sources checked:

• No verified rules on cryptocurrencies or tokens as property, and none on ownership of data as an asset class; no such statute was found, and none is claimed here;
• No verified .cv domain statute or dispute policy: registry practice must be confirmed directly with the registry;
• No fee schedules or operational details of the new online filing services under the 2025 Industrial Property Code were available for this page.

For the digital economy, the practical conclusion is that protection is assembled from copyright, the Industrial Property Code, trade-secret rules, trademark law against confusing use, the e-commerce and data-protection framework, and contract, rather than from a single “digital property” title.

When to speak with a lawyer

Legal advice is worthwhile when registering software-adjacent rights and trademarks, negotiating licences for digital content, structuring an online business or responding to infringement and domain misuse. The directory lists business and commercial law lawyers.

This page is general information, not legal advice.