The concept of fair dealing is statutorily entrenched in Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957. What fair dealing does is that it permits certain acts with respect to copyrighted works, which otherwise would have constituted as infringement. The concept of fair dealing found in the UK copyright law as well as the Indian copyright law, is much more restrictive that its US counterpart, fair use. While the Indian law provides a specific list of fair dealing acts and purposes, the US law uses certain set of factors to classify fair use.
Section 52 on the Indian Copyright Act, entitled ‘Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright’, enumerates certain permitted acts with respect to various types of works and the purposes. The Section has been amended numerous times, the most recent amendment being the 2012 one. The 2012 Amendment Act introduced many new changes including safe harbour provisions and provisions with respect to persons with disability. To simplify this rather elaborate and detailed section, a tabular version of this Section can be found below.
Disclaimer: While the above table attempts to cover most aspects of the copyright law and fair dealing, the reader is requested to not construe the table as exhaustive and/or conclusive.
Authored by Anchita Sharma
Contributed by the Entertainment Law Group at BananaIP
For any further information on Entertainment law in India, write to contact@bananaip.com
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