Southworth Library Faculty Services

Introduction

The Fair Use Doctrine protects the use of copyrighted works for socially beneficial activities such as teaching, learning, and scholarship. Courts consider four factors in deciding whether a use is Fair Use or an infringement:

1. Purpose of the Use (learning, commentary, criticism, OR commercial);
2. Nature of the Publication (factual OR creative);
3. Amount and Substantiality of the Whole (small OR substantial);
4. Effect on the Market (has no effect OR replaces a sale).

Section 107 of U.S. Copyright law lists the four factors of Fair Use.

Fair Use Resources

• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries
• U.S. Copyright Law: What you can do

• Checklist for Conducting a Fair Use Analysis before using Copyrighted Materials (Cornell)

• Fair Use Overview

• The TEACH Act and some additional resources

• Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States

• Copyright Diagram

• Public Domain Works Database

  An open registry of artistic works that are in the public domain.

• Intellectual Property and the Arts

  This is the seventh in a series of articles sponsored by the College Art Association Committee on Intellectual Property (CIP).

• Creative Commons

  Provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."