Square puzzle: Open Clipart, public domain. Text added by C. Daoutis.

Fair Dealing Week (26 February to 1 March 2024) is an annual opportunity to highlight copyright exceptions and how you may rely on them when using copyright materials in your studies, research and teaching. Although the main focus of the week is on ‘fair use’ in the US – quite different from ‘fair dealing’ – in previous years events were organised across countries with similar provisions, including the UK.

This year we will be marking fair dealing with a series of blog posts that discuss three copyright exceptions in UK copyright law that are subject to what we call ‘fair dealing’. We are also running a Q and A session on Monday the 26th of February at 2 pm at the UCL Institute of Education. 

Register for the copyright exceptions Q and A

When using materials created by others (text, images, video etc) you normally need permission or a licence from the copyright owner. There are, however, other options to consider. In some cases, materials are in the public domain, either because copyright has expired or because the copyright owner has waived the copyright – as is the case in the square puzzle image used here. In other cases, materials are in copyright but are available under an open licence, allowing reuse under certain terms. Examples include open access articles, images available under a Creative Commons licence, and open source software.

In specific cases, you may also be able to use materials without permission by relying on ‘permitted acts’ (also known as copyright exceptions) which are defined in UK copyright law. Some of these exceptions are subject to ‘fair dealing’, which essentially means treating the materials in a ‘fair-minded and honest’ way.  It is essential to understand how you can rely on copyright exceptions as this will help you use materials in a more flexible way. To help you test your knowledge, we have put together a 7-question quiz on copyright exceptions.

Take our new copyright exceptions quiz

Whether you are already a pro at fair dealing exceptions or would like to know more, look out for more copyright posts next week. We also hope you can join the Q and A on Monday!

With the new academic year upon us, what better time to post a refresher on copyright practices?

Whether you are preparing your lectures, carrying on with your research projects, attending new modules or writing your dissertation, here is a reminder of what you can do when using resources in your teaching, learning and research…while staying within copyright law.

1. You can rely on licences and services the University subscribes to. The CLA Higher Education licence allows UCL staff to scan or photocopy extracts from a large number of books and journals. The service is managed by the library: teaching staff putting together reading lists should visit the Course Readings webpage. Please see our earlier post on how the CLA works.

Similar licences are in place for newspapers (NLA Media Access licence) and recordings (Educational Recording Agency – ERA licence/Box of Broadcasts  – BoB service).

2. Electronic journals and e-books. You don’t always need to digitise or copy. You can access (and provide links for your students) to the vast amount of electronic resources, including journal articles and e-books, e-books and digital journal articles the University subscribes to.

3. Open Access resources. You can access any Open Access journal articles, book chapters, monographs and other resources, including those held in UCL’s very own Open Access repository or published by UCL Press. If a resource is licensed under an open licence such a Creative Commons licence you don’t have to worry about limits to how much you can copy.

You may also be able to adapt the resource and share with others, depending on the terms of the licence. Visit the openverse resource, a database of over 600 million image and audio materials that are openly licensed or in the public domain: you can reuse these without permission in your research, studies and teaching. Please be sure to comply with any licence terms.

4. Fair dealing. For materials that are not licensed for reuse, you can consider relying on ‘fair dealing’. Essentially this means that UK copyright law allows you to use limited amounts of published materials for specific purposes, including research and educational purposes (e.g., quotation, criticism and review, illustration for instruction, examination). Use of the materials should be reasonable and appropriate to your purpose, in ways that do not damage the commercial interests of the creators/rights owners; and you should always fully acknowledge the authors and the source.

Fair dealing is a matter of interpretation and therefore you may want to seek advice if unsure. This brings us to our final point.

5. You can contact the library’s copyright team for further information and advice or to discuss a training session. We offer introductory sessions on copyright, as well as more specialised sessions  related to your theses, research and teaching. We will be sharing this term’s programme very soon. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us at copyright@ucl.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.

The first UK Fair Dealing week is nearly upon us!  Celebrating the Fair Dealing exceptions in UK copyright law, this week highlights and encourages a better understanding of the topic.  It began as the US ‘Fair Use Week’ which this year has been extended to include countries who use the concept of Fair Dealing in their copyright law.  Though different doctrines they have core similarities.

Chris Holland will write separately about the concept of Fair Dealing and the UK copyright exceptions it works alongside, and the considerations or ‘test’ you might refer to.  For now we wanted to point you to the events happening: the ALT Copyright and Online Learning Special Interest Group have a comprehensive list of events.  I also look forward to Chris reporting back on the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange panel discussion, on 24th February, which he is taking part in.

We would love to hear from anyone who attends the events and wishes to add their thoughts here. And as always, if this raises any questions then do request a staff briefing, or Q&A, or meeting with your students with a focus on Fair Dealing specific to teaching, research or a student project.

A recent enquiry concerned the use of a past thesis in a writing workshop where students of a specific course would have the opportunity to examine and also to critique the writing style of that thesis, which would be studied as a relevant example. The question was whether it would be acceptable to copy the thesis in its entirety for the purpose of the workshop.

It seems very likely that this re-use of a thesis would be “fair dealing” in terms of the education (or “illustration for instruction”) exception which can be found in Section 32 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). Naturally this would only be “fair dealing” to the extent that the copies were used strictly for the task in hand and not for any additional purpose beyond the scope of Section 32. The context also needs to be “non-commercial” so something like  a fee-charging CPD course would probably not be covered.

In addition Section 32 does not specify that the work must have been  “…made available to the public” as does the exception for criticism, review, quotation and news reporting (Section 30, CDPA) for example. So that question does not arise in relation to the thesis.

This query received by the UCL Library involves several aspects of copyright. A researcher, Shilpa, who is planning to publish a book, has visited the Library to consult a PhD thesis. The author of the thesis (Hector) died a few years previously. Shilpa has asked about the copyright implications of reproducing some quotations from Hector’s PhD thesis in her book. A question springs to mind for those familiar with the recent changes to UK Copyright Law:

Could the use of material from the PhD thesis be covered by the new, broader Quotations exception (Section 32 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988)? If the quotations are of modest length and meet the requirements of the Fair dealing test (which applies to Section 32 along with other copyright exceptions) then it may be that the researcher will feel confident in relying on the exception.

However, if there is any doubt about whether it is then, given especially that the book will be commercially published, Pam may decide to reduce her risk by seeking permission.

 But then whom should she approach for permission? Copyright would initially have belonged to the author. The thesis is unpublished so it is most likely that copyright remained with the author, now deceased. IP rights can be inherited like any item of property. Unless the author of the thesis made provision for the copyright in his works in a will it has probably been inherited by his family as part of his estate. The task facing Shilpa is therefore to trace Hector’s family in order to find the copyright owner and seek permission.

The Fair Dealing test has been mentioned before in this blog. The majority of the recently updated exceptions to copyright rely upon this test and so it is in the spot light, although it was already an established concept in UK Copyright law.

In contrast to the concept of “fair use” in US copyright law, which can be applied generally, “fair dealing” in UK copyright law is only relevant in the context of the statutory exceptions. It is a test of whether we are applying the exception correctly and therefore of whether we can rely upon it for protection.

The UK Intellectual Property Office say: “There is no statutory definition of fair dealing – it will always be a matter of fact, degree and impression in each case. The question to be asked is: how would a fair-minded and honest person have dealt with the work?”* Therefore it will always depend upon the context, but two key questions will generally apply:

• Could we be damaging the copyright owner’s interests by our use of their work? For example by producing something in direct competition?
• Are we using more of their work than is really necessary in the particular circumstances.

By way of example, copying an extract for the purposes of setting an examination may be fair dealing whereas reproducing the same material in a published work under the Quotation exception (which applies from 1^st October)might not be fair dealing.

*IPO (2014),Exceptions to Copyright: Guidance for creators and copyright owners

The examination exception is part of the exception for purposes of “illustration for instruction” (CDPA 1988 Section 32). The new Section 32 is very good news but in relation to examinations it is more restrictive. The old exception permitting copying for setting or completing an examination was unrestricted. Now the fair dealing test applies to the whole section including copying for examinations. What does this mean?  In the examination context it is unlikely that we would be damaging the economic interests of the rights owner. The main thing to bear in mind is that in setting examinations we should not include more of the work than is strictly necessary and it should be acknowledged where possible. A positive aspect is that the exception now covers all media, such as an extract of recorded music or of a film.  

The examination exception covers 3^rd party material included in a PhD thesis. The student should be aware that in including 3^rd party material they need to apply the fair dealing test, key questions being:

• Am I using more of the work than is really necessary for the purpose?
• Could I be damaging the interests of the copyright owner by reproducing their work in this way?

Remember that the examination exception does not cover subsequent publication of your thesis in UCL Discovery or reusing the same content in a journal article. You will need to consider applying for permission or publishing a redacted version

Among the updated exceptions to copyright introduced this month there are two which are specific to education and which I will cover in separate blog posts. Firstly there is the exception “…for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction”. This is in the amended Section 32 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It is a “fair dealing” exception and is available to those receiving and giving instruction.

Now expanded to cover any method of copying and copyright works in any medium, this exception has been transformed into something useful, but care is required about what is and is not covered.  Examples that would be covered:

• A modest extract from a film in a presentation to students, as long as the extract is copied from a legal source and the other criteria are fulfilled.
• Distributing copies of an extract from a book to students for use in a seminar.

What would not be covered:

• Anything which is not “fair dealing” such as an unreasonably long extract or a replacement for purchasing copies of a text book.
• Anything done for a commercial purpose, such as a charged CPD course.
• Long-term storage of the extracts, beyond the immediate teaching context.  

The exception will permit usage of material not already covered by a licence. In some cases there may be a choice between the exception and copying under a licence.  There is a good case for preferring the licensed route to minimise risk.

A post on copying for examinations will follow.