Fair Dealing

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 includes certain exemptions known as ‘Fair Dealing’.
Fair Dealing allows for certain works to be used or reproduced without permission from the copyright owner.  There is no strict definition of what this means, however the courts have considered economic impact to be a major consideration.

Therefore, it may be within the scope of 'fair dealing' to make single photocopies of short extracts of a copyright work for non-commercial research or private study, criticism or review, or reporting current events, provided a sufficient acknowledgement is included.

The purpose of this exception is to provide students and non-commercial researchers more access to copyright works.

In all other cases, permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, often in the form of a copyright licence.

More information can be found on the Intellectual Property Office website.