It can often be tricky to determine whether something you want to do falls within fair dealing. The two-step test below, provided by the Supreme Court of Canada in the CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada decision, can help you make a decision. When using fair dealing in a teaching or educational context, please refer to the Fair Dealing Advisory.
Ultimately your decision will depend on your particular circumstances, and you have to make a judgment call as to whether your use can be classified as “fair”. If you have any doubt, you should ask for permission. If the work is a library-licenced electronic resource, the permissibility of your use is determined by the terms of the licence. See the Electronic resources appropriate use guidelines for more information about using library-licenced content.
Step 1: Check whether your purpose is a permitted purpose
Are you using the work for the purpose of:
- Research
- Private study
- Criticism
- Review
- News reporting
- Education
- Satire
- Parody
Yes - Continue to step 2
No - Check whether use is covered under:
- Any other Copyright Act exception
- Library licences for electronic journals and databases (Note: some licences may prohibit some uses even if the purpose is one of the above.)
- Cinematograph film licences
- Any other agreement
Step 2: Check whether your use is "fair"
Is the nature of the dealing fair?
| Nature of the Dealing |
Less fair
|
More fair
|
|---|---|---|
| Purpose |
Commercial
|
Charitable/Educational
|
| Character of the dealing |
Multiple copies;
Widely distributed/repetitive
|
Single copy;
Limited distribution/one-off
|
| Importance/amount of work copied |
Entire Work/Significant excerpt
|
Limited/trivial amount
|
| Effect of dealing on the original work |
Competing with
original work |
No detriment
to original |
| Nature of the work |
Confidential
|
Unpublished/in public Interest
|
| Available alternatives |
Non-copyright works
available; Not necessary for
purpose |
No alternative
works; Necessary to achieve
purpose |
Fair dealing flow chart by the University of Waterloo Copyright Advisory Committee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.