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April 30, 2007, 04:13 PM ET
Adventures in Fair-Use Doctrine
Fair-use doctrine, as codified in U.S. law, allows people to reproduce portions of copyrighted works "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research." That seems straightforward enough. But there's a spanner in the works, as Shelley Batts can attest: Copyright holders can't seem to agree on just which uses are fair.
Last week Ms. Batts, a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, wrote a harmless-looking blog post about a study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. The study examined the effects of alcohol on the antioxidant properties of some fruit. She summarized its findings and reproduced a chart and a graph from the journal.
Shortly thereafter, the Society of Chemical Industry, which publishes the journal, threatened a lawsuit and demanded that Ms. Batts remove the charts. She took down the offending material and redid both charts on her own: "Apparently," she wrote, "that's 100% legal and OK."
But the incident drew the attention of other bloggers in the scientific community, most of whom argued that the society had misconstrued fair-use doctrine and was acting hypocritically. After all, the company did put out a news release highlighting the results of the study.
The society has now invited Ms. Batts to reinstate the charts, and blamed the threat of litigation on a "misunderstanding." Accordingly, some of the furor over the fiasco has died down. But the incident is likely to prompt scholars to consider, once more, the often bizarre ways in which fair-use doctrine is enforced. If it's acceptable for Ms. Batts to recreate charts and then post them, is there any reason that she shouldn't be allowed to copy those charts straight from the article in which they appear? --Brock Read
Categories: Research, Legal-Troubles
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