Good day. I currently work in the publishing field, but have a unique inquiry regarding fair use related to copyright law; I am interested in launching an executive summary service to assist busy clinicians who need quality summaries of the medical literature -- journal articles, etc. -- some under copyright law, some from open-access journals/Creative Commons, and some from pre-press repositories, etc. I would be charging subscriptions for my summary services, and I need a better understanding of whether I need explicit licenses from the publishers to be able to stay on the proper side of copyright law. I see a number of services in the marketplace which summarize business books or self-help books, but my research hasn't been able to uncover how they are able to proceed without triggering legal action on the part of publishers. Or are summaries of medical journal articles covered under Fair Use? Thanks!
1 Answer
Fair use is not particularly relevant to the enterprise of publishing executive summaries. Copyright protection extends to any and all creative works, so the materials that you create are protected, and you can sell them or give them away as you please. Copyright does not protect ideas and facts, it only protects the expression of those ideas and facts. There are practical about how to avoid accidental infringement – the simple answer is, don't copy, instead learn what the article says, then write your abstract anew, not copying the original expression. You may have problems with graphic objects, and may need to get a license to reproduce a (photo)graph, though many conceptual-simple graphs can easily be redone in some other graphing program, if you can guess what the underlying numbers are.
