Fair Dealing
Fair dealing is a term that is used to refer to acceptable use of a copyright-protected work. Fair dealing is not, however, defined by the legislation and does not automatically grant permission to re-use parts of a work. Rather, it is a legal defence should the rightsholder claim an infringement had taken place.
Fair dealing involves the fair and reasonable copying of a work to benefit an individual or society, in a way which does not prejudice the commercial interests of the rightsholder. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 permits copying of a limited amount of a work for the following purposes:
- private study
- non-commercial research
- criticism or review
- news reporting
- non-commercial instruction and examinations
To qualify as fair and reasonable copying, an insubstantial amount of a work may be copied for the above purposes, where no commercial gain is involved. No copying would be permitted under fair dealing for other uses. Only one copy is normally permitted under Fair Dealing and the source should always be acknowledged.
'Insubstantial' refers to both quantity and quality of the extract used. A small but otherwise significant part of a work, such as the key findings of a report or the central theme of a piece of work, may still be considered as 'substantial'. There are no set limits as to what constitutes 'substantial' and acceptable quantities will vary from one case to another.