"Toward a Fair Use Standard", 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1105 (1990), is a law review article on the fair use doctrine in US copyright law, written by then-District Court Judge Pierre N. Leval. The article argued that the most critical element of the fair use analysis is the transformativeness of a work, the first of the statutory factors listed in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Leval's article is cited in the Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., which marked a shift in judicial treatment of fair use toward a transformativeness analysis and away from emphasizing the "commerciality" analysis of the fourth factor. Prior to Leval's article, the fourth factor had often been described as the most important of the factors.
In his article, Leval noted:
I believe the answer to the question of justification turns primarily on whether, and to what extent, the challenged use is transformative. The use must be productive and must employ the quoted matter in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original. ...[If] the secondary use adds value to the original—if the quoted matter is used as raw material, transformed in the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings—this is the very type of activity that the fair use doctrine intends to protect for the enrichment of society.
Transformative uses may include criticizing the quoted work, exposing the character of the original author, proving a fact, or summarizing an idea argued in the original in order to defend or rebut it. They also may include parody, symbolism, aesthetic declarations, and innumerable other uses.
Leval's article was published with an accompanying article by Lloyd Weinreb "Fair's Fair: A Comment on the Fair Use Doctrine", 103 Harvard Law Review 1137 (1990), which generally critiqued Leval's thesis.
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Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. Unlike "fair dealing" rights that exist in most countries with a British legal history, the fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works and turns on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount used, and the impact on the market of the original work.
Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which public interest in learning about a historical figure’s impressions of a historic event was held not to be sufficient to show fair use of material otherwise protected by copyright. Defendant, The Nation, had summarized and quoted substantially from A Time to Heal, President Gerald Ford's forthcoming memoir of his decision to pardon former president Richard Nixon. When Harper & Row, who held the rights to A Time to Heal, brought suit, The Nation asserted that its use of the book was protected under the doctrine of fair use, because of the great public interest in a historical figure’s account of a historic incident. The Court rejected this argument holding that the right of first publication was important enough to find in favor of Harper.
Pierre Nelson Leval is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At the time of his appointment by President Bill Clinton in 1993, he was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), was a United States Supreme Court copyright law case that established that a commercial parody can qualify as fair use. This case established that the fact that money is made by a work does not make it impossible for fair use to apply; it is merely one of the components of a fair use analysis.
Fanfiction has encountered problems with intellectual property law due to usage of copyrighted characters without the original creator or copyright owner's consent.
In United States copyright law, transformation is a possible justification that use of a copyrighted work may qualify as fair use, i.e., that a certain use of a work does not infringe its holder's copyright due to the public interest in the usage. Transformation is an important issue in deciding whether a use meets the first factor of the fair-use test, and is generally critical for determining whether a use is in fact fair, although no one factor is dispositive.
Castle Rock Entertainment Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132, was a U.S. copyright infringement case involving the popular American sitcom Seinfeld. Some U.S. copyright law courses use the case to illustrate modern application of the fair use doctrine. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court's summary judgment that the defendant had committed copyright infringement. The decision is noteworthy for classifying Seinfeld trivia not as unprotected facts, but as protectable expression. The court also rejected the defendant's fair use defense finding that any transformative purpose possessed in the derivative work was "slight to non-existent" under the Supreme Court ruling in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994).
In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work. The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in form from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. Translations, cinematic adaptations and musical arrangements are common types of derivative works.
Fair dealing is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. Fair dealing is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time limit, and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1926, are in the public domain.
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving Perfect 10, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc. The court held that Google's framing and hyperlinking as part of an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, overturning most of the district court's decision.
Authors Guild v. Google was a copyright case heard in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit between 2005 and 2015. The case concerned fair use in copyright law and the transformation of printed copyrighted books into an online searchable database through scanning and digitization. The case centered on the legality of the Google Book Search Library Partner project that had been launched in 2003.
NXIVM Corp. v. The Ross Institute, 364 F.3d 471, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision that held that the defendant's critical analysis of material obtained in bad faith, i.e., in violation of a non-disclosure agreement, was fair use since the secondary use was transformative as criticism and was not a potential replacement for the original on the market, regardless of how the material was obtained.
Fair dealing in United Kingdom law is a doctrine which provides an exception to United Kingdom copyright law, in cases where the copyright infringement is for the purposes of non-commercial research or study, criticism or review, or for the reporting of current events. More limited than the United States doctrine of fair use, fair dealing originates in Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and requires the infringer to show not only that their copying falls into one of the three fair dealing categories, but also that it is "fair" and, in some cases, that it contains sufficient acknowledgement for the original author. Factors when deciding the "fairness" of the copying can include the quantity of the work taken, whether it was previously published, the motives of the infringer and what the consequences of the infringement on the original author's returns for the copyrighted work will be.
Fair dealing is a statutory exception to copyright infringement, and is also referred to as a user's right. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, it is more than a simple defence; it is an integral part of the Copyright Act of Canada, providing balance between the rights of owners and users. To qualify under the fair dealing exception, the dealing must be for a purpose enumerated in sections 29, 29.1 or 29.2 of the Copyright Act of Canada, and the dealing must be considered fair as per the criteria established by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., 1:2008cv01425, was a case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in which three publishers, Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, and Oxford University Press, initially filed suit in 2008 against Georgia State University for copyright infringement.
Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., 934 F. Supp. 2d 640 , is a case from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concerning copyright infringement of digital music. In ReDigi, record label Capitol Records claimed copyright infringement against ReDigi, a service that allows resale of digital music tracks originally purchased from the iTunes Store. Capitol Records' motion for a preliminary injunction against ReDigi was denied, and oral arguments were given on October 5, 2012.
Hubbard v Vosper, [1972] 2 Q.B. 84, is a leading English copyright law case on the defence of fair dealing. The Church of Scientology sued a former member, Cyril Vosper, for copyright infringement due to the publication of a book, The Mind Benders, criticizing Scientology. The Church of Scientology alleged that the books contained material copied from books and documents written by L. Ron Hubbard, as well as containing confidential information pertaining to Scientology courses. Vosper successfully defended the claim under the fair dealing doctrine, with the Court of Appeal deciding unanimously in his favour. The judgment given by Lord Denning clarified the scope and content of the fair dealing defence.
Folsom v. Marsh, 9. F.Cas. 342 is a 19th-century US copyright case, widely regarded as the first "fair use" case in the United States. The opinion was written by Judge Joseph Story, who set forth four factors that are in use today, and were ultimately codified in the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. § 107.
Controlled digital lending (CDL) is a model by which libraries digitize materials in their collection and make them available for lending. It is based on interpretations of the United States copyright principles of fair use and copyright exhaustion.