fair use doctrine

fair use doctrine

An exception within the U.S. copyright law that allows excerpts from copyrighted material to be quoted and used in another publication. For example, a paragraph or two from a book would be considered fair use as long as the original work is cited. However, if a poem in its entirety is only two paragraphs, or as in the case with this publication, a definition in its entirety is only two paragraphs, copying those two paragraphs without permission is not fair use but copyright infringement.

In this encyclopedia, we use images of vendor products under the fair use doctrine, because the image is already displayed on the vendor's public Web site and is available to everyone, and we use it in context with a caption that explains what the product does and how it works. However, if an image from a vendor's site were copied without permission for use as a background on another Web site or in an advertisement for another product or service, it would not be fair use.

Fair use is interpreted on a case-by-case basis. For example, in the Betamax litigation regarding videotaping, the court stated it was fair use to copy an entire movie for the purpose of watching it later. The U.S., Canada, Israel and South Korea have fair use policies. The rest of the world varies greatly with respect to fair use and copyright infringement. See copyright.