What does Islam say about intellectual property and copyright?

Intellectual property is a modern legal concept, so there's no direct verse or hadith addressing it by name, but scholars have derived rulings by applying established Islamic principles around property, honesty, and unjust consumption of others' effort. The Quran instructs believers not to consume one another's wealth unjustly except through legitimate mutual-consent trade, and jurists widely apply this to a creator or inventor's labor and investment: reproducing, distributing, or profiting from someone's creative or intellectual work without permission is generally viewed as a form of taking their effort and potential earnings without their consent, comparable to theft of tangible property. On this basis, the majority of contemporary Islamic scholarly bodies (including major fiqh councils) recognize copyright, patents, and trademarks as legitimate rights deserving legal protection, and consider piracy, plagiarism, and unauthorized commercial use of others' work impermissible. There is some nuance and disagreement at the edges — for instance, around the permissible sharing of religious knowledge, fair use for education or critique, or how long such rights should reasonably last — but the core principle, that a person's intellectual labor deserves respect and fair compensation, is broadly accepted.

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