What can I do with this article? A look at copyright


We discovered the CEO of a company we serve emailed a PDF’s of an article we generated through the public relations program. While I am not an attorney, I prepared the following guidance regarding appropriate use of copyrighted materials.












Dear Customer:

You asked for an opinion about the use of copyrighted materials generated from the public relations program. As background, I have recently had some uncomfortable discussions with a publisher regarding our forwarding articles to clients and his insistence that he be paid for his company’s work product. (This is reasonable considering how they make money – subscriptions and reprint rights.)

The good news is there are several options that will not break the bank (or break the law).

The challenge: We cannot legally use the text of an article without permission. Typically, this requires a reprint rights payment (which can run several hundred dollars). On some rare occasions, a publication may give you rights if you ask them.

The risk: Your company could get sued for distributing or posting a magazine’s copyrighted materials. The media outlet could also decide to ban your company from appearing in the publication.

The solutions: Your company could pay for reprint rights or rely on “fair use.” In short, fair use is the legal use of portions of copyrighted materials. For example, we can quote a statistic or pull a sentence from an article, as long as we accurately quote and/or reference the source. Another condition is that we may not use so much information that we “lessen the marketability” of the materials – meaning, we cannot share large portions of an article or key findings, which would thereby make the original materials irrelevant. Think of it this way, if a company e-mailed the key findings of an analyst report that cost $2,400 – why would anyone pay for the original?

Here are a few examples of how we can use the fair use provision to share the good news about your company and illustrate how we are recognized by the leading industry publications:

1. Use the headline of the article, cite the publication and briefly describe the context of your company as seen in the article.

2. Write an abstract of article, usually one paragraph. MBA’s NewsLink e-mail newsletters use this technique often (see http://www.mbaa.org/NewsandMedia/MBANewsLink).

3. Link to an online version of the article on the publisher’s website.

There will be some articles that are so favorable that you will want to purchase reprint or PDF rights to share with prospects, investors and customers. Please don’t hesitate to call me about this or any other issue.

Best regards,


Scott Mills, APR
President
William Mills Agency

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