Fair Dealing Flowchart
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It is important to determine whether your copying falls within fair dealing. This page sets out the factors you should consider when making that determination. Whether your copying is fair depends on your particular circumstances. If you are not sure, contact the Copyright Office for assistance.
Step One: Check whether your copying is for a permitted purpose
Are you copying the work for the purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire, or parody?
Yes - Continue to the second step
No – Consult our Before You Copy page. Is the copying permitted under an Act exception or licence?
Step Two: Check whether your copying is fair
The factors below can assist in determining whether a specific reproduction is fair.
|
Nature of the Dealing |
Less Fair |
More Fair |
|
Purpose |
Commercial |
Charitable/Educational |
|
Character of the Dealing |
Multiple copies; Widely distributed/repetitive |
Single copy; Limited distribution/one-off |
|
Importance/Amount of Work Copied |
Entire Work/Significant excerpt |
Limited/trivial amount |
|
Effect of Dealing on the Original Work |
Competing with original work |
No detriment to original |
|
Nature of the Work |
Confidential |
Unpublished/in public Interest |
|
Available Alternatives |
Non-copyright works |
No alternative works; Necessary to achieve |
Learn more about whether your copying falls within fair dealing with these interactive decision-making tools:
- Copyright Decision Roadmap - University of Saskatchewan
- Copyright Fair Dealing Analysis - University of Western Ontario
- Copyright Roadmap - University of Toronto
- Fair Dealing Evaluator Tool – Queen’s University
- Fair Dealing Tools – University of Guelph
This website provides educational information. It does not provide legal advice.
Source: University of Waterloo. (n.d.). Fair dealing flowchart. Retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/copyright-at-waterloo/fair-dealing-flow-chart . [Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.]
