Fair Use in Fiction and NonFiction
Lawyers ask me all the time: What are the rules about copyright? What does it cover? When does it attach? Are there any exceptions? How long does it last? What are the consequences of violating another’s copyright?
These questions seem simple, but they aren’t. And the answers should be easy, but they’re not. Nor is there one place where all such simple questions and easy answers are collected for authoritative quick reference.
When lawyers write, they generally write nonfiction: Opinion letters or other correspondence, briefs, motions, statutes, journal articles and the like. When we learned legal writing in law school, we learned the technical rules of research and citation reflected in the Blue Book of Uniform Citation. In practice, many courts require specific styles in written submissions. Journals are the same.
All of this, though, is concerned with how the writer organizes the symbols on the page, not what substantive material is appropriately reproduced in the content of the work.
Nothing definitive is ever definitive in the law, as we know. The answers to copyright questions are always, “Yes, except . . . ”
With that caveat, then, we’ll answer a few of the more common questions about copyright in our next post. If you have specific questions you’d like us to consider, let us know and we’ll do our best to help.
