The Doctrine Of Fair Use And Fair Dealing

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Doctrine of Fair use and Fair dealing
Fair dealing is an enumerated set of possible defences against an action for infringement of an exclusive right of copyright. Unlike the related United States doctrine of fair use, fair dealing cannot apply to any act which does not fall within one of these categories , although common law courts in some jurisdictions are less stringent than others in this regard. In practice, however, such courts might rule that actions with a commercial character, which might be naïvely assumed to fall into one of these categories, were in fact infringements of copyright, as fair dealing is not as flexible a concept as the American concept of fair use.
A fair dealing with any work (except computer programmes) is allowed in India for the purposes of-
a. private or personal use, including research,
b. criticism or review,
c. reporting of current events and current affairs, including the reporting of a lecture delivered in public.
The term fair dealing has not been defined anywhere in the Copyright Act 1957. However, the concept of 'fair dealing ' has been discussed in different judgments, including the decision of the Supreme Court of India in Academy of General Education v. B. Malini
Mallya (2009) and the decision of the High Court of Kerala in Civic Chandran v. Ammini Amma.
“Fair use” laws facilitate increase in creative and ingenious productivity, which is the primary objective of the law of copyright. A set of factors assist in the decision making

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