Cabo Verde has ratified the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty.

Cabo Verde has ratified the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

Cabo Verde lacks a comprehensive framework in place that provides effective protection of trade secrets, but there are limited measures addressing some issues related to them. Art. 271 of Legislative Decree No. 4/2007 of 20 August 2007, approving the Intellectual Property Code (Decreto-Legislativo No. 4/2007, de 20 de Agosto, que aprova o Código da Propriedade Intelectual) states that it is an administrative offence to disclose, acquire or use a competitor's business secrets without their consent, provided that the information:
- is secret, in the sense that it is not generally known or easily accessible, in its entirety or in the exact configuration and connection of its constituent elements, to persons in the circles that normally deal with the type of information in question;
- has commercial value by virtue of its secrecy;
- has been the subject of considerable efforts, appropriate to the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information to keep it secret.

There is no obligation for passive infrastructure sharing in Cabo Verde to deliver telecom services to end users, nor is passive infrastructure sharing practised in the mobile and fixed sectors based on commercial agreements.

The government directly owns 3.4% of the shares in Cabo Verde Telecom. The government also indirectly owns shares in Cabo Verde Telecom for a total of 78.6% of shares through the following public companies: National Institute of Social Security (INPS) (57.9%), Airports and Aviation Security (ASA) (20%) and Cape Verde Post Office (CCV) (0.7%).

Cabo Verde does not mandate functional separation for operators with significant market power (SMP) in the telecom market. However, there has been an obligation to separate the accounts since 2005. According to Art. 39 of Legislative Decree No. 7/2005, operators who provide publicly available electronic communications networks or services and enjoy special or exclusive rights for the provision of services in other sectors must:
- Have a separate accounting system for the activities of providing electronic communications networks or services, which must be subject to an independent audit to be carried out by an entity to be appointed by the "Autoridade Reguladora Nacional" (ARN, National Regulatory Authority) or accepted by it; and
- Create legally separate entities for the corresponding activities to identify, based on the respective calculations and the allocation methods used, all the elements of expenditure and revenue linked to these activities, including a detailed breakdown of fixed assets and structural costs.

Cabo Verde has appended the World Trade Organization (WTO) Telecom Reference Paper to its schedule of commitments.

The Multisector Regulatory Agency for the Economy (ARME), the executive authority for the supervision and administration of services in the telecommunications sector, is independent from the government in the decision-making process. Art. 1 of ARME Statutes states that the authority has administrative, financial and patrimonial autonomy. The Statutes were approved by Decree-Law No. 50/2018.

Art. 19 of Law No. 133/V/2001 states that the transfer of personal data outside of Cabo Verde is only permissible if the foreign country ensures adequate protection. However, according to Art. 20, the transfer of personal data to a country which does not ensure an adequate level of protection may be permitted by "Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados Pessoais" (CNPD, National Commission of Data Protection) if the data subject has given consent to the transfer or under limited exemptions provided for by the law.

Cabo Verde has not joined any agreement with binding commitments to open transfers of data across borders.

The Law No. 133-V-2001 provides a comprehensive regime of data protection in Cabo Verde, and it is enforced by the "Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados Pessoais" (CNPD, National Commission of Data Protection), which became operational in 2015.

Art. 29.1 of Law No. 133/V/2001, as amended in 2021, provides for an assessment of the impact of the planned processing operations on the protection of personal data whenever a particular type of processing, in particular one using new technologies, is likely to involve a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons, taking into account its nature, scope, context and purpose. Moreover, Art. 30.1 of the law requires the controller and the processor to appoint a data protection officer (DPO) and Art. 30.2 allows a group of companies to appoint a single DPO.

A basic legal framework on intermediary liability for copyright infringements is absent in Cabo Verde law and jurisprudence.

Art. 226 of the Legislative Decree approving the Intellectual Property Code provides that the applicant must appoint a representative in Cabo Verde in the case of patent applications filed by interested parties (natural or legal persons) who are not domiciled or established in Cabo Verde. However, the interested party or the holder of the right, whether natural or legal, domiciled or resident in Cabo Verde, is free to present his applications for industrial property titles in person or to have them presented by a recognised lawyer (Art. 225(1)).

Cabo Verde is a party to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).