September 2024
Background Note
HBS Case Collection

Copyright and Fair Use

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:3

Abstract

The U.S. Copyright Office defines a copyright as “a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression.” Two core principles of copyright are originality and fixation. A work is considered original when it has a “spark” of creativity, and has fixation when the work can be seen or heard by either a person or a technological device. If someone wants to use the work, they must receive permission from the copyright holder, except in fair use cases. In 2024, after being sued for copyright infringement by multiple publishing and creative companies, AI companies argued that their training was covered under fair use, and they did not need permission to train their models on these datasets.