Question

The Case:In order to promote its work, Tikea, a furniture store,had prepared a very sophisticated and detailed catalogue that explains the steps that the company follows in order to assist its clients. The catalogue explains also how to help clients to plan for their interior, then the delivery process and the assembly service. While preparing his project, Jim, a senior business student, has discovered Tikea’sCatalogue. It seemed very relevant to the topic Jim was working on(innovative clients’ service)and thus he decided to copy paste the main parts of the catalogue and has integrated these parts into his project and presented the whole work as his own without making any changes.Jim project was extraordinarily successful. Thus, the University has decided to award him with a prize (a significant amount of money)and an opportunity to implement his project by connecting him with a newly established furniture store. This news and a brief description of Jim’s project have been posted on the University social media accounts. As soon as Tikea management has read the news, the management identified their work in Jim’s project Tikeais claiming that they are the copyright holder of the catalogue and that Jim has not taken their permission before using it in his project and thus he has violated copyright law. Jim replied asserting that even if no permission was given, his use of the catalogue is not a violation of copyright because his action falls under the exception of fair use.

Questions:A.Does the behaviour of Jim constitute the exception of fair use? Please explain in detail considering the criteria of fair use

B.Please advise Jimon two ways of using the material of Ikea without violating copyrights

Answer 1

A. This behavior of Jim does not constitute the exception of fair use.

The exception of fair use includes copying any copyright work of someone for the purpose of commenting or critiquing on his work.

The act done by Jim is that he copied the main parts of the catalogue which seemed important for his project and he presented that as his own work in his University. Though the content was not his original but it was just copy paste and also no changes were made into it, it cannot be called as Jim's original work.

And also before doing such act, Jim should must have asked the store if he could copy those or not. So, it could not be considered for an exception of fair use as neither his project did any comment or critise on the work copied from the Tiles store nor did it was made to be used for parody which is one another exception for fair use.

So, it can be concluded that as the work copied by Jim was for the purpose of completion of his project whereby copying did not have any connection with any of exceptions of fair use and also it was represented by Jim as his original work in the university and as the copying was done wothout taking permission from Tikea store, so it cannot be counted on an exception of fair use.

B. Ways to use work of Tikea without violating the copyrighs are :

• Before copying the content of Tikea store, Jim must take a formal permission from the store to copy its content in his project . Also in his project he should quote this clearly that the contents are copyright of Tikea store. Doing this, he will not be violating any of copyright laws.
• The other way is he could use those contents for the purpose of making any type of comparisons or for critiquing in his work that would be helping to bring new and fair concepts to people. In doing such, it would be a case of an exception of fair use, where the content is being used for a fair reason. And hence, it will not be said to violate the copyrights.