Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Tuesday that he had accepted the resignation of Culture Minister Gehan Zaki, one day after the Court of Cassation issued a final, unappealable ruling upholding her conviction for intellectual property infringement.
The court also ordered her book, “Coco Chanel and Qout Al-Qulub,” to be withdrawn from the market and ordered her to pay 100,000 Egyptian pounds (around $2,000) in compensation to its author, Sohair Abd El Hamid, a journalist at Al-Ahram.
In a statement posted on Facebook on Tuesday, the Cabinet said the minister had submitted her resignation “to spare the government embarrassment over this personal case,” adding that she “will continue to pursue all available legal procedures, including filing a petition for reconsideration of the rulings as permitted by law, as exercising legal rights does not conflict with respecting judicial rulings.”
The case sparked widespread debate when Zaki was appointed culture minister, succeeding Ahmed Hanno in February as part of a cabinet reshuffle in Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly’s second government, seven months after the Cairo Economic Court issued its ruling against her in July 2025.
In its written reasoning, the lower court said Zaki had “exceeded the legal limits of quotation” set out in the Intellectual Property Protection Law, finding that her actions caused Abd El Hamid “moral harm resulting from the infringement of her intellectual effort, as well as material damages including litigation costs and lost opportunities to profit from her original book, which retails for 130 pounds (about $2.60) per copy.”
Zaki appealed the ruling twice, arguing that the Intellectual Property Protection Law exempts analytical studies and excerpts used for criticism, discussion, or reporting, and that her book falls within those exceptions.
However, the Court of Cassation rejected both appeals and, in Monday’s ruling, upheld the order requiring the minister to pay 100,000 pounds to Abd El Hamid “as compensation for the material and moral damages resulting from the infringement of intellectual property rights and the unjustified quotation from one of her works.”
