North Richland Hills, TX asked in Copyright and Intellectual Property for Texas

Q: Copyright Infringement Question?

Hi There!

I am researching something for a Newsletter Aggregator that combines 20 different email newsletters into one newsletter. The idea of the newsletter aggregator is to summarize the content of a publishers newsletter. That summary would then be added with 19 other summarized notes into one newsletter to a user?

Would I get hit any copyright infringement if I were to build this something like this?

1 Lawyer Answer
Fritz-Howard Raymond Clapp
Fritz-Howard Raymond Clapp
Answered
  • Intellectual Property Lawyer
  • Beverly Hills, CA

A: Your comments and summary text would be original works for purpose of copyright, and your selection and aggregation of the newsletters would be fair use. It would be wise to include a fair use disclaimer:

"This [site/newsletter] contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of the issues mentioned. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 USC 107, the material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes."

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