Quoting from a book with &quot;All rights reserved&quot;. Fair use? Is it considered "fair use/fair dealing" to quote a short sentence or two from a book who's copyright statement mentions only "All rights reserved"? I'm writing a book and explaining some concept. To drive the point home I add a quote from another book (the one one with "All rights reserved"). I mention from which author the quote is and from which of his book. I provide all the details of the book, ISBN, publisher, everything. The quote is short. A sentence or two. I will later be selling my book. Do I still need to get permission from the author or is this fair use?
(Note: the answer below deals with US copyright law only.) There are specific carve-out in the &quot;fair use&quot; law for &quot;scholarship&quot; and &quot;research&quot;: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 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 US Copyright Office has some more information about how courts have interpreted fair use, as does Nolo. Going through these criteria one by one: A work that is commercial is less likely to be fair use. A work that is &quot;transformative&quot;, meaning that it serves a different purpose than the original, is more likely to be fair use. Quoting from a factual work (such as an encyclopedia) is more likely to be fair use than quoting from a creative or imaginative work (such as a novel). The less quoted, the better. If the quoted material is peripheral to the primary purpose of the quoted work, it is more likely to be fair use than if it's &quot;the heart of the work&quot;. (As an example, The Nation was once found to have violated fair use because it quoted verbatim the section of Gerald Ford's memoirs that dealt with the Nixon pardon — even though the quoted section was less than 0.2% of the entire work.) If your work will be directly competing with the original work in the market, it is less likely to be fair use. Nolo also notes that Quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations would be deemed acceptable. An art historian would be able to use an image of a painting in an academic article that analyzes the painting. Finally: even if you check every one of these boxes, the law is not 100% crystal clear, and there's still a chance that you'll get sued. While you might prevail in court, you'd still have to go through the hassle of defending your work; or alternately, you'd have to pull it from the market. For this reason, it may be worth your peace of mind to seek permission from the copyright holders anyhow, or to consult a legal professional.
First off, the work is almost certainly not in the public domain in the US. Works are generally copyrighted upon creation or publication, but in this case the work was probably explicitly copyrighted. The fact that a work is out of print generally has no bearing on its copyright status. US copyright law changed several times in the last century. The 1985 copyright year means the board game was probably published then, and it's since it's a Disney copyright it's a corporate work, which would give it a copyright term of 95 years, meaning that it should be covered under copyright until 2080. See this factsheet on copyright from the US Copyright office. Works Created on or after January 1, 1978 For works made for hire and anonymous and pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter International laws will vary, but many countries adhere to the Berne Convention, which means that international laws will probably be at least similar. Either way, the work isn't very old from an intellectual property perspective. Fair use is an exception to copyright law that allows portions of copyrighted works to be used without permission or compensation in certain circumstances; academic or scholarly use is one of them. Generally, your use of the work has to be the minimum necessary amount to serve your purposes, and cannot harm the commercial value of the work. (The fact that the work is out of print may help with the latter.) The problem with fair use is that it's always determined on a case by case basis. The only way to know for sure if a particular use is fair use is to wait for the copyright holder to sue you and then make a fair use defense in court. I was going to suggest that you discuss this with the editor of your journal, but re-reading your question it looks like you're planning to publish to a personal blog rather than an academic journal. In the end, it's up to you (or your attorney, if you choose to hire one) to analyze the relevant legal concepts and rules and decide if and how much of the work to use.
Assuming Chegg own the copyright, then they can restrict the activities that copyright protects The statement you quote is no more or less than the rights granted to them by copyright law. Basically, it's their stuff, they get to decide how you can use it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the uses that you have nominated are prohibited. For that, we would have to look at the specific fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright protection where you are. It's likely that both of your usage scenarios would meet fair use and probably fair dealing (which is harder to meet). You may also find that, buried somewhere in those massive terms of use, is something that deals with this directly.
This is not (necessarily) copyright violation It's possible that Quora's usage falls within Fair Use. At the very least, the argument could be made. If it does, then there is nothing that Stack Exchange or the OP can do. Stack Exchange can choose not to protect their copyright Unlike trademarks, which lapse if not protected, copyright endures. Therefore Stack Exchange can pick and choose the copyright fights they want to get involved in and those they don't. If you have brought it to the attention of the copyright owner (or, in this case, licensee) and the copyright owner chooses not to act then you have done all you can and significantly more than you have to do. The OP has copyright I note that one of the examples is your question. As the copyright holder, you are free to issue a DCMA takedown notice on Quora if you feel your copyright has been violated.
"The rights to this work reverted to the author in 1951" means that back in 1951 the publisher's contract to print the book ended, and the author resumed full rights. (This might have been done by the author, or the publisher, depending on their contract.) It does not mean that the copyright lapsed or that the work entered the public domain. "Ms. Margaret Wilson" was presumably the author or the author's agent, or perhaps the publishers representative back in 1951. She may or may not be alive, and the firm of "Duell, Sloan &amp; Pearce, Inc" may have been the new publisher (unless it was the old one, the question is not clear, and without the title I can't cross check). If DS&amp;P was the new publisher, the rights might now be held by E. P. Dutton, as they seem to have acquired the rights to the bulk of the DS&amp;P catalog. In any case, the copyright would (if it is in force) now be held by the author's heir, or whoever the author might have sold or given it to. Someone will be the legal owner. That it is not being marketed does not release the copyright or license the work for general use. If there was no other heir, it would have become government property. In the US, it would become the property of the state where the owner was a legal resident. If this was a work by a US author first published in the US, copyright needed to be renewed after 28 years, which would have been in 1959 (plus or minus one year, I believe). If the work required copyright renewal, and this was not done, then the work is in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone. Records of copyright renewals, by year, are available for download from Project Gutenberg, or can be searched at the US Copyright Office. There is no way to be sure how the "scanning institution" determined that "No known copyright restrictions" apply, short of asking that institution. It is possible that they checked for a copyright renewal and did not find one. If you use content from this work, and the copyright is still in force, the copyright holder or an exclusive licensee could sue for copyright infringement. There is no way to tell if this would in fact happen. It may well be that the legal holder does not even know that s/he owns this copyright. Obviously, in that case, a suit is highly unlikely. But that would be entirely at the risk of anyone who used such content. Under US law, such use might or might not be considered "fair use". This would depend on several factors, and there is not enough information in the question to even guess. Fair use is an active defense, that an accused infringer may assert in court. It also does not apply in non-US cases. The odds are probably against any such suit being brought, but the amount at stake if one was brought could be large.
how would this differ between say ArXiv which is open access, and a publication that is pay-only, like Elsevier or Nature? It wouldn't. But if the equation is the creation of the author of some publication, as in the author is expressing some unique mathematical expression, obviously the publication should be referenced. But is referencing enough? Are there additional rights one must obtain from the publication and/or author in order to show this content? Laws of nature, including purported laws of nature, are not protected by copyright. So, usually, key equations in an academic paper aren't protected by copyright law. Referencing the work is important as a matter of academic ethics, but is legally irrelevant. Copying of exposition by the author beyond laws of nature is permitted as fair use if it is limited to quotations necessary for academic discussion and criticism, but copying of an entire work would not be permissible fair use in most cases and would constitute copyright infringement. Of course, there is a large gray area between those extremes.
The UK copyright Act has the concept of &quot;fair dealing&quot; which is more restricted that the US concept of &quot;fair use&quot;. For your purposes, Section 30 appears to be applicable: 30 Criticism, review and news reporting. (1) Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement and provided that the work has been made available to the public. (1A) For the purposes of subsection (1) a work has been made available to the public if it has been made available by any means, including— (a) the issue of copies to the public; (b) making the work available by means of an electronic retrieval system; (c) the rental or lending of copies of the work to the public; (d) the performance, exhibition, playing or showing of the work in public; (e) the communication to the public of the work, but in determining generally for the purposes of that subsection whether a work has been made available to the public no account shall be taken of any unauthorised act. For your reviews, you would need to properly attribute the source of the image that you were using and that source must be legitimate. If you can't find a clear legal pathway from the image you have to the actual copyright holder you could be in trouble (e.g. an image from someone else's blog where that image may have been uploaded illegally). Your best bet is to go to the studio concerned and use images from their official public releases with proper attribution.
This topic came up as a sub-point to another question a few weeks ago, I ended up doing a fair bit of research with not much in terms of concrete results. I'll start with the USA since they're basically the only major copyright jurisdiction for which I could find a straightforward answer, then discuss internationally. USA In the USA, Bob would generally not hold copyright in modifications thus there is no copyright for Alice to violate, assuming no copyright exceptions like fair use apply. This is due to 17 U.S.C 103(a) (see also Anderson v. Stallone): The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully. While I couldn't find any commentary on this point, the wording does seem to imply that portions of a derivative with additions far enough removed from the original work might qualify for copyright protection. International copyright law The main provisions governing derivative works in international copyright law come from Berne Convention Article 2(3): Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work. and Article 12 (with a similar provision specifically for translation in Article 8): Authors of literary or artistic works shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations, arrangements and other alterations of their works. There's the argument that since unauthorized derivatives aren't explicitly excluded from protection that they should be protected, however, there's also the argument that granting unauthorized derivatives their own copyright is in itself prejudicial to the original copyright holder. Note I don't think it's debated that non-infringing derivatives gain their own copyright, including unauthorized derivatives that nevertheless fall into a copyright exception such as fair use. Dr. Daniel Gervais points out in The Derivative Right, or Why Copyright Law Protects Foxes Better than Hedgehogs section III.B that there's a bit of history here. The original Berne Convention 1886 text stated that &quot;Lawful translations shall be protected as original works.&quot; However, the word &quot;lawful&quot; was struck out in the 1908 Berlin Convention coming up with wording similar to today's Article 2(3). Gervais's article cites Étude sur la Convention de Berlin de 1908 pour la Protection des Œuvres Littéraires et artistiques by André Petit implying disagreement between the countries about whether or not to protect unlawful derivatives, thus leaving it unsaid. Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate any copies of this source. Additionally, thanks to a fortunate snippet Google Books displayed, I know that La conférence de Berlin (14 octobre-13 novembre 1908) by Georges-François-Joseph Martin also discusses this exact point on page 187, quoting someone who thought unlawful derivatives would be protected now, though I couldn't get enough context to really determine anything. While I could find available copies of this book, for now it's a little on the expensive side for me. Overview of various jurisdictions In the EU, the derivative right is not harmonized and so the question is punted to the Member States. There is no implementation of either Berne Convention Article 2(3) or Article 12 in the Information Society (Copyright) Directive, Article 12 being specifically acknowledged by the Court of Justice in the Allposters case. In the UK, infringing derivatives are probably protected, see Redwood Music Ltd. v. Chappell &amp; Co. Ltd., [1982] R.P.C. 109 (Q.B. Div.) at 120. I can't find the judgement text outside a paywall, but an article by William J. Braithwaite (PDF) quotes the relevant part on page 209 (the square brackets are his): [T]he idea that [the owner of the underlying copyright] should be entitled to reap the benefit of another's original work, by exploiting it, however extensive such work might be, however innocently it might have been made, offends against justice and common sense. Additionally, the justice noted the argument that unlawful derivatives are not explicitly excluded from copyright protection and that parliament has declined to make this explicit. If I understand the English court system correctly, this decision was two appeals away from the Supreme Court (House of Lords back then), but there doesn't appear to have been any appeal. For what it's worth though, the justice who issued the decision ultimately became Senior Law Lord. In Italy, the Supreme Court has determined that derivative works can be simultaneously infringing and protected.