Copyright: Fair dealing and exceptions

By Candace Westby, TM Examiner

A copyright owner is the ONLY per-son who can adapt their work; make copies and distribute them; perform, broadcast or play the work in public; put it on the inter-net; or lend copies. It’s illegal for anyone else to do these things without the copyright owner’s per-mission.

But like other copyright laws around the world, Cayman’s Copy-right Law lists exceptions to these rules. Known as ‘fair dealing’, the exceptions allow the use of copy-right-protected works without the permission of the rights holder, for specific purposes.

In the Cayman law, some excep-tions are:

• Personal copying for private use

• Non-commercial research and private study

• Text and data mining for non-commercial research

• Criticising, reviewing and re-porting current events

• Educational use by schools, uni-versities or other educational estab-lishments

• Helping disabled people by making a braille copy

• Time shifting, by recording TV to privately view later

• Use for parody, caricature and pastiche

• Use by libraries, archives and public administrations

• Making backup copies, decompi-lation, observing, testing and study-ing, and correcting computer pro-gramme errors

• Any acts necessary to access the contents of a database

• Using a design to make a product

• Creating backup copies of eBooks when originals are no longer usable

• Making notes or recordings for purpose of recording current events

• Publicly reciting a reasonable ex-tract from a published literary or dramatic work

• Using abstracts of scientific and technical articles

• When it’s difficult to identify au-thors or to ascertain if the copyright has expired.

To help determine if your use of cop-yright-protected works without permission consti-tutes fair dealing, ask yourself:

• Is the amount copied reasonable and appropriate, or does the copied portion con-stitute a significant part of the work? Was it necessary to copy that amount?

For example, if the conclusion of the work is one page, it may not be con-sidered fair for you to copy that en-tire page. This would be based upon the amount and substantiality of the portion taken.

• What is the nature or purpose for copying the work?

Are you in college, or reporting cur-rent events? If your reason for copying does not fall under the previous-ly listed exceptions, you may be guilty of infringement.

• Does copying this work deprive the copyright owner of income?

If your use of the work ends up caus-ing the owner to lose revenue, this would not be considered fair.

While these factors will vary from case to case, it’s worth considering them when planning to use copy-right-protected works without the owner’s permission. So keep these things in mind as you get creating, Cay-man!

CIIPO is a unit under General Registry
To learn more about intellectual property, visit www.ciipo.gov.ky or email : info@ciipo.gov.ky