Fair Use

What Is Fair Use?

Because fair use is decided through the courts, no easy guidelines can spell out its use. Access the Checklist for Fair Use or the Fair Use Four Factor Test to determine whether or not your proposed use of another’s work favors fair use.

Examples of Fair Use

Using another’s work for purposes such as…

Criticism, comment, news reporting
Teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use)
Scholarship
Research

Definitions Related to Fair Use

Create: to make or bring into existence; to produce through imaginative skill.
Develop: to create or produce especially by deliberate effort over time.
Produce: to cause to have existence or to happen; to give being, form, or shape to; to compose, create, or bring out by intellectual or physical effort.
Adapt: to rewrite a composition into a new form; to make fit (as for a specific or new use or situation) often by modification.
Reproduce: to present again.
Revise: to make a new, amended, improved, or up-to-date version of.
Reprint: to print again; to make a reprint of.

“Adapt,” reproduce,” “revise,” and “reprint” require permission from the original work’s copyright holder; in the work adapted, revised, etc., you must credit the original.

Guidelines for Copying Material for Classroom/Educational Use

Check the university's Guidelines for Classroom Copying.

Caveat: Obtain permission for materials that you will be using repeatedly for the same class/program.

Use this handy Checklist for Fair Use to help you figure out if your proposed use of another’s work falls under the Fair Use Guidelines. From the Copyright Management Center, Indiana University/Purdue University/Indianapolis.

The Four Factor Fair Use Test can help you understand what factors, on balance, favor or don’t favor your Fair Use of another’s work.

University of Maryland’s Copyright Clearance Center researches the copyright status of works in question & obtains any necessary permissions.

AGNR letter of permission (Word doc) template, which includes template for original author’s return letter.

Ask a copyright question of the Center for Intellectual Property, University of Maryland University College.

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Last updated: 04/14/2010