Dorrance's Author's Guide: The Dorrance Experience

T H E L A W, C O P Y R I G H T / F A I R U S E, P R O T E C T I O N A N D Y O U P A R T III

The doctrine of fair use is a provision of the copyright law which allows individuals other than the holder of the copyright of a work to legally copy, without going through the sometimes stifling and cumbersome process of obtaining permission to reprint brief portions of the work for certain purposes, e.g. when a reviewer quotes from a work being reviewed or when one author quotes from another to support an argument.

The law sets no exact limits on the amount of "borrowing" which constitutes fair use, but courts and private individuals have long used the following criteria to determine whether the fair use principle applies:

Whether the use is for a commercial or nonprofit educational purpose;
The nature of the copyrighted work;
The amount and substantiality of the portion used as it relates to the copyrighted work as a whole;
The effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work.

Generally if a significant portion of copyrighted work is used (whole chapters or lengthy passages from a book or novel or entire articles from a journal), the use would be considered unfair. A helpful guideline to follow is that uses of another's work should be used to highlight or augment points already being made; use should never overshadow the original work of the author.

When an author signs a contract with a publisher, he or she guarantees that the work is original, that he or she owns it, and that no part of it has been previously published. If an author is including lengthy material from another copyrighted source or has had parts of or all of the work previously published with another publisher, the author should obtain written permission to reprint it from the copyright owner and then forward the permission to the publisher for filing with the publishing contract. The notice of original copyright and permission to reprint will then appear in the book. When in the slightest doubt as to whether a borrowed portion may be too long for fair use, an author should always, as a safeguard, seek permission to use it from the copyright owner.

Works in the public domain consist of materials created by the United States government or works for which legal copyright has expired. These works may be quoted and used freely without permission as long as proper credit is given to the source.

The nature of copyright law and the doctrine of fair use may seem laborious and perhaps a hindrance to the creative spirit, but their existence is imperative to preserving the integrity of the creative process. Any author interested in learning more about copyrights may contact any one of Dorrance Publishing's Author Relations Representatives at 1-800-695-9599 for more information about the United States copyright laws, as they relate to a particular manuscript.

(Literature Readings)