page_title: Fair use
section_title: U.S. fair use factors
hierarchical_section_title: Fair use / History / U.S. fair use factors
context_page_description: 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. Like "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.
  The doctrine of "fair use" originated in the Anglo-American common law during the 18th and 19th centuries as a way of preventing copyright law from being too rigidly applied and "stifling the very creativity which [copyright] law is designed to foster." Though originally a common law doctrine, it was enshrined in statutory law when the U.S.
context_section_description: Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship. Fair use provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor test.
  The U.S. Supreme Court has traditionally characterized fair use as an affirmative defense, but in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (2015) (the "dancing baby" case), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that fair use was not merely a defense to an infringement claim, but was an expressly authorized right, and an exception to the exclusive rights granted to the author of a creative work by copyright law: "Fair use is therefore distinct from affirmative defenses where a use infringes a copyright, but there is no liability due to a valid excuse, e.g., misuse of a copyright."
  17 U.S.C. § 107
  Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  the nature of the copyrighted work;
  the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
  
  The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
  The four factors of analysis for fair use set forth above derive from the opinion of Joseph Story in Folsom v. Marsh, in which the defendant had copied 353 pages from the plaintiff's 12-volume biography of George Washington in order to produce a separate two-volume work of his own. The court rejected the defendant's fair use defense with the following explanation:
  [A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites the most important parts of the work, with a view, not to criticize, but to supersede the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy ...
  In short, we must often ... look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work.
  The statutory fair use factors quoted above come from the Copyright Act of 1976, which is codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107. They were intended by Congress to restate, but not replace, the prior judge-made law. As Judge Pierre N. Leval has written, the statute does not "define or explain [fair use's] contours or objectives." While it "leav[es] open the possibility that other factors may bear on the question, the statute identifies none." That is, courts are entitled to consider other factors in addition to the four statutory factors.
caption: Joseph Story wrote the opinion in Folsom v. Marsh.
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