The copyright system is designed to protect individuals' exclusive rights to use their work. However, American copyright law provides for exceptions to copyright protections under a doctrine called "Fair Use."
Fair Use allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for certain purposes, including commentary, criticism, news reporting, scholarship, and parody. Unfortunately, there are no hard-and-fast laws or rules that define what qualifies as fair use and what doesn't. Whether a particular use falls under fair use can only be definitively determined through litigation in the courts. Many copyright holders are not interested in or do not have the means to pursue copyright infringement claims, especially if there is a high likelihood that the use in question would be construed as fair use. If you are thinking about using copyrighted work in your research or teaching, you can mitigate your risk by evaluating your use case using the four-factor balancing test that courts use, which considers:
- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
- The nature of the copyrighted work (e.g., whether it is factual or creative in nature)
- The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
- The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
Learn more about copyright and fair use at the resources linked below, or get help from a librarian via Ask Us or by contacting ULS-DigitalScholarshipServices@groups.pitt.edu.
