Conducting a Fair Use Analysis: A Practical Guide

Summary. How to answer a fair use question so the answer is useful and defensible.

Start by refusing the question as asked

Almost every fair use question arrives in a form that cannot be answered:

"Can we use this photo?" "Is it okay to quote this book?" "Are we allowed to train on this dataset?"

None of these is answerable, because fair use is not a property of a work. It is a property of a use. After Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508 (2023), this is not merely a stylistic point — the Supreme Court held that the first factor examines "the specific use of a copyrighted work that is alleged to be an infringement," which means the analysis changes with the context of use even for the same work by the same user.

So the first step is always to convert the question into a specification.

Six facts you need before you begin:

1. What exactly is being used? Not "a photo" — this photo, this crop, this resolution. Not "a book" — these 340 words from page 88.
2. What is the source work? Author, publication date, publication status, subject matter, and — crucially — how the owner ordinarily exploits it.
3. How much, relative to the whole? Both quantitatively and qualitatively. Is it the heart of the work?
4. In what medium and context will it appear? A frame in a film, a header on a blog post, a slide in a lecture, an input to a training run.
5. What is the purpose? Not the business purpose — the communicative purpose. What work is this material doing in your product?
6. Who is the audience, and is the use commercial?

If you cannot answer all six, you are not ready to analyze. Send the question back.

PART ONE: GATHERING THE FACTS

Step 1 — Identify the work and its owner

Determine what is actually protected. Facts and ideas are not. Neither are United States government works, nor works in the public domain, nor — under the government edicts doctrine — the text of the law itself. A surprising number of fair use questions dissolve at this stage because the material was never protected.

Find the owner. Copyright ownership under 17 U.S.C. § 201 may sit with the author, an employer under work-made-for-hire, or a transferee. Search Copyright Office records, check publication credits, and note that ownership may be split by medium or territory.

Determine publication status. Unpublished works weigh against fair use under factor two, though Congress amended 17 U.S.C. § 107 to provide that unpublished status alone does not bar a finding of fair use.

Determine registration status. This does not affect the fair use analysis but transforms the risk. Under 17 U.S.C. § 412, statutory damages and attorney fees are unavailable for infringement commencing before registration (subject to a three-month grace period for published works). An unregistered work means the plaintiff must prove actual damages — usually the license fee — which caps exposure dramatically. A timely registered work means exposure of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 504.

This is the single most useful risk input available, and it takes ten minutes to check.

Step 2 — Characterize the use precisely

Write one sentence describing what the material does in your work. Test it against these categories:

• Commentary or criticism of the source work itself — the strongest position.
• Commentary on something else, using the source work — satire; weaker, needs justification.
• Documentation or evidence — showing that something exists or was said.
• Illustration of a point not about the work — weak; decorative use is the weakest of all.
• Functional or technical necessity — interoperability, indexing, format conversion.
• Substitution — the material serves the same function it served in the original.

The Warhol question: does your use share the original's purpose? If a photograph was created to illustrate magazine articles and you are using it to illustrate a magazine article, you have the Warhol problem regardless of how much you have altered it.

Step 3 — Map the owner's markets

Factor four requires knowing what markets the owner exploits or reasonably would. Gather:

• How the owner licenses this work and works like it
• Whether a licensing market exists for uses like yours (stock agencies, collective licensing, permissions departments, sync licensing)
• Published rate cards or comparable license fees
• Whether the owner has licensed for this kind of use before, or refused to
• Whether the market you would occupy exists independently of uses like yours

The circularity trap. Every use could theoretically be licensed. Courts therefore ask whether the market is one owners "traditionally, reasonably, or likely would develop," excluding markets that exist only because of the challenged use. A defendant should be prepared to explain why the asserted market falls outside that boundary; a plaintiff should be prepared to show it inside.

PART TWO: RUNNING THE FACTORS

Step 4 — Factor one, in the order that matters

Do not start with commerciality. Start with purpose.

(a) State the original's purpose. What was the work made and exploited for?

(b) State your purpose. What is the material doing in your work?

(c) Are they the same or highly similar? If yes, and your use is commercial, factor one weighs against you unless you have a specific justification. This is the Warhol holding.

(d) If different, how different? Transformation is a matter of degree. Indexing a work to make it findable is very different. Recontextualizing an image to comment on the culture that produced it is meaningfully different. Adding a filter is not.

(e) Do you have a justification for using this work? This is the parody-satire distinction from Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), generalized. Could you have made your point with a different work, or with your own material? If yes, your justification is weak. If the specific work is the subject of your commentary, or is the only work that will serve a technical function, your justification is strong.

(f) Now weigh commerciality. Commercial use is one element, not a trump. Most protected uses — journalism, criticism, publishing — are commercial.

(g) Note good faith, but do not rely on it. Bad faith is a bad fact. Good faith is not a factor.

Step 5 — Factor two, quickly

• Creative works (novels, songs, photographs, films, fine art) → weighs against fair use.
• Factual or functional works (compilations, technical documentation, news accounts, software interfaces) → weighs for.
• Unpublished → weighs against.

This factor rarely decides anything. Spend a paragraph on it and move on, unless the work is genuinely functional, in which case say so at length — it did real work in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. 1 (2021), where the functional nature of declaring code shaped the entire analysis.

Step 6 — Factor three, quantitatively and qualitatively

Quantitatively: what fraction of the source work did you take?

Qualitatively: did you take the heart of it? Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) involved roughly 300 words out of 200,000 — but they were the most newsworthy 300 words in the book.

Proportionality to purpose: the operative question is whether the amount is reasonable in relation to the purpose established under factor one. Ask: could you accomplish your purpose with less? If yes, take less. If no, say why in the memorandum.

Complete copying is not automatically fatal. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) and the search cases establish that copying an entire work can be fair where the complete taking is necessary to a different purpose and the output does not substitute.

Step 7 — Factor four, with evidence

(a) Direct substitution. Would a consumer of your work forgo the original? For most commentary, no. For most decorative use, yes.

(b) Derivative market harm. Does your use occupy a licensing market the owner exploits or reasonably would?

(c) The aggregation question. Campbell directs consideration of what would happen if uses like yours became widespread. Answer it honestly; it is the question a court will ask.

(d) Evidence. This is where fair use defenses fail. Assertions that "there is no market harm" without support lose. Gather: the absence of a licensing market for this use type; the owner's own licensing history; evidence that the works serve different audiences; and, where the stakes justify it, expert or survey evidence.

Step 8 — Weigh, do not count

Write a paragraph that does the weighing explicitly. Which factors matter most here, and why? A use that loses factors two and three but wins one and four decisively is usually fair. A use that wins two and three but loses one and four is usually not.

State the answer as a risk tier, not a verdict:

PART THREE: WRITING IT DOWN

Step 9 — The memorandum

A fair use memorandum serves three functions: it forces the analysis, it documents good faith, and it is the deliverable a client, insurer, or platform will ask for.

Contents:

1. The use, specified. What material, how much, in what context, for what purpose.
2. The source work. Owner, publication and registration status, how it is exploited.
3. Factor-by-factor analysis with the reasoning shown.
4. The weighing paragraph.
5. The risk tier and the reasons for it.
6. Mitigations — ways to strengthen the position (use less, change the context, add commentary, alter the presentation).
7. Alternatives considered — licensing, substitution, original creation. Document that you looked.
8. Date and a recommendation to revisit if the use or the market changes.

Why the alternatives section matters. Evidence that you sought a license and were refused, or that no license was available, supports the justification analysis. Evidence that you never looked supports the opposite.

Why willfulness matters. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2), statutory damages may be reduced to as little as $200 where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe" the acts were infringing, and the court shall remit statutory damages where a nonprofit educational institution, library, archive, or public broadcaster reasonably believed the use was fair. A contemporaneous memorandum is the best available evidence of reasonable belief. It also cuts the other way: a memorandum concluding the use is untenable, ignored by the business, is the plaintiff's best exhibit. Advise accordingly and be clear about what happens to the document.

Step 10 — Escalation

Build a standing rule for who decides at each tier. A workable structure for an in-house function:

The point of the framework is not bureaucracy. It is that fair use judgments carry organizational risk, and the person who bears that risk should be the person making the call.

PART FOUR: THE CONTEXTS

Documentary film and journalism

The best-developed clearance practice, driven by errors-and-omissions insurers who require fair use opinions with specified elements.

What works: using material as evidence of what was said or shown; critical commentary on the material itself; incidental capture of copyrighted material in a real scene.

What does not: using archival footage because it is beautiful; using music to set a mood; using a clip that could have been licensed cheaply and was not.

Practical points. Insurers generally require that the use be discussed in the film or serve an evident evidentiary purpose, that the amount be no more than needed, and that the opinion be written by qualified counsel. Build the clearance log during production, not in post.

Publishing and quotation

What works: quotation for criticism, review, scholarship, or illustration of an argument; quotation of factual material; brief quotation with commentary.

What does not: epigraphs (decorative, and there is a permissions market); song lyrics (music publishers police these aggressively and license routinely); poetry, where even a few lines can be a large proportion of the whole.

Practical points. Publishers maintain permissions departments and standard practices that are typically more conservative than the law requires. Learn the house rule and the legal rule separately, and know which one you are being asked about.

Education

What works: limited classroom copying tied to a specific class session; use in face-to-face teaching; scholarly quotation.

What does not: systematic course packs replacing purchased texts; persistent library reserves that substitute for licensing where a permissions market exists.

Practical points. The negotiated guidelines from the 1970s are not law and are more restrictive than § 107 in some respects and less in others. Institutions should adopt a policy that applies the statutory factors rather than a numerical rule.

Software and interoperability

What works: reverse engineering to achieve interoperability; reimplementing interfaces so developers can reuse skills, per Google v. Oracle; intermediate copying necessary to study a program.

What does not: copying implementing code for its expressive content; copying to avoid the work of writing your own.

Practical points. The contract layer usually matters more than copyright. License terms, terms of service, and anti-circumvention obligations under 17 U.S.C. § 1201 restrict conduct that copyright alone would permit, and fair use is not a defense to breach of contract.

Marketing and social media

The most common source of avoidable infringement claims. Header images, stock photography, memes, user photos reposted, and music in short-form video are all routinely used without rights.

The honest answer is usually "license it." Rates are low, sources are plentiful, and the fair use argument for decorative use is untenable after Warhol. Build a policy that makes licensed material the default and route the rare genuine fair use question — commentary on a competitor's advertising, for example — to counsel.

Machine learning

The frontier, and the context where the analysis most rewards precision.

Separate the questions. Training, model weights, and outputs raise different issues and should be analyzed separately. Courts have begun to treat them distinctly, and a memorandum that conflates them is not useful.

For training, the argument tracks the search cases: complete copying for a purpose entirely different from the original's, producing statistical relationships rather than expression. The counterargument is that a licensing market for training data now exists and is being displaced.

For outputs, the Warhol shared-purpose question is central. Outputs that compete in the same market as the training works — illustrations competing with illustrators, articles competing with articles — face a much harder factor one and factor four.

Adjacent claims matter. 17 U.S.C. § 1202 prohibits removing or altering copyright management information, and those claims are being pleaded independently of infringement. Contractual restrictions in dataset licenses and site terms operate independently of copyright entirely.

Practical advice. Document data provenance from the start. Maintain records of what was collected, under what terms, and with what filtering. Retrofitting provenance is close to impossible and is the single largest practical risk in the area.

A worked intake, start to finish

The request. On a Tuesday afternoon, Priya Venkataraman, general counsel of a mid-sized educational publisher, receives an email from an editor: "Legal — the author of the statistics textbook wants to reproduce a chart from a 2019 academic paper. Can we?"

Step one: refuse the question and get the facts.

Priya replies with the six questions. The answers come back over two days:

1. What exactly? One figure — a scatterplot with a fitted regression line — reproduced at approximately original size, with the axis labels and caption retained.
2. Source work? A 2019 article in a peer-reviewed journal. Copyright held by the journal publisher, not the authors, under a standard transfer agreement. Published. Registration status unknown.
3. How much? One figure out of eleven in a 22-page article.
4. Medium and context? Chapter 7 of a printed and digital textbook, in a section teaching students how to interpret regression output.
5. Purpose? To show students a real example of a published regression figure and to discuss what it does and does not establish. The surrounding text critiques the figure's presentation — specifically, that the confidence band is omitted.
6. Audience and commerciality? Undergraduate students; the textbook is sold commercially at $89.

Step two: screening. The figure presents data, and facts are not protectable. But the selection and arrangement — the choice of axes, scaling, and visual presentation — is expression, and figures are routinely treated as protectable. Priya's paralegal checks Copyright Office records: the journal issue is registered. That matters. Exposure includes statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and fees under 17 U.S.C. § 505.

Step three: characterization. The one-sentence description: "The figure appears as the subject of a critical discussion of how regression results are visually presented." That is commentary on the work itself — the strongest category.

Step four: market mapping. Priya checks. The journal publisher participates in a collective licensing scheme, and permission for a single figure in a textbook costs roughly $120 with a two-week turnaround. A licensing market plainly exists.

Step five: the factors.

Factor one. The original's purpose was to report research findings. The textbook's purpose is to teach students to read such figures critically, and the surrounding text discusses this specific figure's shortcomings. Those purposes are genuinely different. And Priya has the Campbell justification: the book needs this figure because the critique is about this figure's omission of the confidence band. Commercial, yes — but so is most criticism. Favors fair use.

Factor two. A scientific figure presenting data is toward the factual end of the spectrum, though the presentation choices are expressive. Published. Slightly favors fair use.

Factor three. One figure of eleven, taken whole because a partial figure would be unintelligible. Reasonable in relation to the purpose. Neutral to slightly favoring.

Factor four. Here is the difficulty. A permissions market exists and is traditional in academic publishing. But the question is whether this use substitutes. A student who reads a critique of a figure in a statistics textbook does not thereby forgo the journal article. And the aggregation question — what if every textbook did this? — has a real answer: the permissions market for figures would shrink. Cuts against.

Step six: weighing. Factors one and three favor; two is mild; four cuts against because of an established permissions market. This is a Defensible use — a genuine fair use argument, particularly given the critical purpose, but not a strong one, because the permissions market is exactly the kind courts treat as legitimate.

Step seven: the recommendation. Priya's memorandum concludes:

The use is defensible as fair use given its critical purpose, but the existence of an established permissions market for academic figures weighs meaningfully against factor four. Because permission is available for approximately $120 with a two-week turnaround, and because the textbook will be reprinted for years, licensing is recommended. If permission is refused or unreasonably conditioned, the fair use position is strong enough to proceed, and this memorandum should be updated to reflect the refusal.

Why this is the right answer. The legal analysis was worth doing — it establishes the fallback and documents good faith. But the operative fact is that a license costs $120 and the analysis cost more than that in Priya's time. A large share of fair use questions resolve this way, and a lawyer who cannot say "just license it" is not being useful.

The postscript. Permission is granted in nine days. Priya files the memorandum anyway, because six months later the same editor asks about reproducing four figures from a paper whose publisher does not respond to permission requests. That time, the memorandum's framework produces a "Strong" conclusion and the book ships without a license.

Building an in-house clearance function

Organizations that handle many fair use questions benefit from structure more than from expertise.

Make licensed material the default. For marketing, editorial illustration, and most business use, a subscription to a stock library eliminates the question entirely and costs less than the legal time to answer it once.

Route by tier, not by requester. A standing rule that decorative uses of third-party creative works are simply not permitted removes the largest category of questions from the queue.

Maintain a clearance log. For projects with many uses — a documentary, a textbook, a training dataset — a running log with a short entry per use is more valuable than a memorandum per use. Columns: material, source, owner, amount, purpose, tier, decision, license reference, date.

Train the requesters. Fifteen minutes explaining that fair use is about the use and not the work, that credit is irrelevant, and that a license usually costs less than the conversation, prevents most bad requests.

Keep provenance records. For any dataset, archive, or library the organization builds, record what was collected, from where, under what terms, and when. This is not a legal nicety. In machine learning contexts it is the single most consequential operational practice, because reconstructing provenance after the fact ranges from expensive to impossible.

Revisit periodically. Factor four asks about the market as it exists. Licensing markets develop. A use cleared in 2022 may need reassessment in 2026, which is why every memorandum should carry a date and a revisit trigger.

A working sequence

Mistakes that recur

Answering "is this work protected?" instead of "is this use fair?"

Treating "transformative" as the conclusion rather than a step. After Warhol, the question is whether the use has a different purpose, not whether the result looks different.

Ignoring the licensing option. Many fair use questions concern uses licensable for a few hundred dollars. The analysis is often beside the point.

Failing to check registration. Ten minutes of work that determines whether exposure is a license fee or $150,000 per work.

Writing a memorandum that concludes the use is fine without engaging factor four. Market harm is the anchor and the most common ground of loss.

Relying on attribution. Credit is irrelevant to the four factors.

Assuming a contract does not apply. Terms of service and dataset licenses restrict conduct copyright would allow, and fair use is not a defense to breach.

Forgetting that a takedown can happen regardless. Platform policies under 17 U.S.C. § 512 are frequently stricter than copyright. Plan for a counter-notice.

When the analysis is done for litigation rather than clearance

A fair use analysis performed after a complaint arrives is a different exercise, and treating it like a clearance memorandum wastes the opportunity.

The burden shifts your focus. As the defendant, you must prove fair use. That means building an affirmative evidentiary record, not merely arguing that the plaintiff has not proven harm.

Factor four needs witnesses. The most effective factor four showings include: testimony from the plaintiff's own licensing personnel about what they do and do not license; evidence that the plaintiff has never licensed for this use type; data showing the plaintiff's revenues were unaffected; and, in higher-stakes cases, survey evidence that consumers of the accused work do not substitute it for the original.

Factor one needs a narrative. The purpose of your use should be established through documents created before the litigation — editorial memoranda, product specifications, design documents — not through a witness explaining after the fact why the use was transformative. Contemporaneous evidence of purpose is worth more than testimony about it.

Discovery you want from the plaintiff:

• Complete licensing history for the work and for comparable works
• Rate cards, permission request logs, and refusals
• Internal documents discussing the accused use
• Revenue data for the work before and after the accused use
• Registration file, including deposit copies and any correspondence
• Evidence of any market the plaintiff claims was harmed

Discovery the plaintiff will want from you:

• Any internal analysis of the use, including this memorandum if it is not privileged
• Alternatives considered
• Revenue attributable to the accused work
• Communications showing awareness of the licensing option
• Volume and duration of the use

The privilege question deserves early attention. A fair use memorandum prepared by counsel is ordinarily privileged. But a defendant that wants to rely on it to negate willfulness will generally have to waive, and the waiver may extend to the subject matter. Decide deliberately, and consider whether the business record — the clearance log, the decision to license alternatives — can carry the good-faith story without the legal analysis.

Remedies drive settlement more than merits. Because statutory damages are assessed per work, a case involving many works carries theoretical exposure disproportionate to any actual harm. Quantify the realistic range early: number of works, registration timing for each under 17 U.S.C. § 412, the plaintiff's actual damages, and fee exposure under 17 U.S.C. § 505 in both directions. That number, not the strength of the fair use argument, usually determines what the case settles for.

Mitigations that actually strengthen a position

When an analysis lands in the "Weak" or "Defensible" tier, the useful next question is not "can we proceed" but "what changes would move this up a tier." Most fair use positions can be improved, often cheaply.

Reduce the amount. The most direct lever. Fifteen seconds instead of forty. Two hundred words instead of six hundred. A crop instead of the full image. Ask what the minimum is that still accomplishes the purpose, and take that.

Add the commentary. A use that sits alongside genuine discussion of the source material is categorically stronger than one that does not. If a documentary shows a clip and the narration never mentions it, add narration that engages it. If a blog post reproduces a chart, write the paragraph explaining what is wrong with the chart. This is not a formality — it changes the purpose of the use, which is the factor that matters most.

Change the presentation. Displaying material at reduced resolution, in a thumbnail, in a way that cannot substitute for the original, strengthens factor four. The thumbnail search cases turn substantially on this.

Separate the uses. Warhol teaches that different uses of the same material get different answers. A museum display and a magazine cover license are not the same question. If a project has multiple uses of one work, analyze each and drop the weak ones rather than letting them contaminate the strong ones.

Use your own material instead. The cheapest mitigation. Where the source work is being used illustratively rather than as a subject, commission or shoot a substitute.

Get a license for the contested pieces. A project with fifty uses and three weak ones should license the three. This is almost always cheaper than the risk and always cheaper than litigation.

Document the refusal. If you sought a license and were refused, or if the owner is unlocatable, record the effort with dates and correspondence. This supports the justification analysis and rebuts the argument that a license was readily available.

Consider the platform layer separately. A use may be legally fair and still be removed under a platform's policy. Where distribution depends on a platform, check the policy before the launch date rather than after a takedown, and know the counter-notice path under 17 U.S.C. § 512 in advance.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a fair use safe harbor for AI training? Not in United States statute. Some jurisdictions have created text-and-data-mining exceptions — the European Union permits research mining and allows rightsholders to reserve commercial mining rights — but United States developers rely on fair use, and the question is actively litigated. The practical response is documentation of provenance and separation of the training, weights, and output analyses.

What if we cannot identify or locate the copyright owner? Orphan works remain a genuine problem in United States law — there is no statutory safe harbor. Document a diligent search (Copyright Office records, publication credits, trade associations, successor entities), because a documented search supports good faith and can reduce statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). It does not eliminate liability, and the risk should be priced accordingly.

Does the analysis differ for material found on a public website? No. Public availability is not permission, and there is no implied license to copy from the open web. What can differ is the market analysis: a work the owner has made freely available may have a weaker licensing market, which bears on factor four.

How do we handle user-generated content on our platform? Two separate questions. Whether the user's use is fair governs the user's liability. Whether your platform is liable is governed principally by the safe harbors of 17 U.S.C. § 512, which require a registered agent, a repeat-infringer policy, and expeditious removal on notice. Do not conflate them.

How long should a fair use memorandum be? For a routine use, two pages. For a documentary with fifty uses, a clearance log with a short entry per use plus a longer memorandum for the contested ones.

Can we rely on a fair use opinion from outside counsel to avoid willfulness? It helps substantially. A reasoned opinion obtained before the use is strong evidence of reasonable belief under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). It is not a guarantee.

What if the owner sends a takedown notice for a use we believe is fair? Evaluate, then decide whether to counter-notice. A counter-notice under § 512(g) restores the material after a waiting period unless the owner sues, so it converts a takedown into a litigation decision for the owner. Consider the relationship and the exposure before filing one.

Does the analysis change for a nonprofit? Nonprofit educational purpose helps under factor one, and § 504(c)(2) provides special remission of statutory damages for certain institutions. It does not make market harm disappear.

Should we ask permission if we think it is fair use? Careful. Asking and being refused does not defeat fair use — Campbell and Google v. Oracle both involved refused or absent licenses — but it creates a record that you thought a license was needed. Many practitioners ask anyway, because a granted license is cheaper than the analysis.

Can fair use be waived by contract? The use can be restricted by contract, and the contract is enforceable on its own terms. Whether copyright preempts a particular contractual restriction under 17 U.S.C. § 301 is a separate and contested question that rarely helps in practice.

Who bears the burden at trial? The defendant. Fair use is an affirmative defense that must be pleaded and proved.

Where to get help

Copyright Office resources. The Copyright Office maintains a searchable public catalog of registrations from 1978 forward, a Fair Use Index summarizing decided cases by category, and circulars on registration and permissions. The catalog is the fastest way to answer the registration question that determines exposure.

Collective licensing organizations. For text, the Copyright Clearance Center handles a large share of academic and corporate permissions. For music, the performing rights organizations and the Mechanical Licensing Collective administer different rights, and sync licensing for audiovisual use is negotiated directly with publishers and labels. For images, stock agencies license routinely at published rates.

Best practices statements. Several communities have published consensus statements on fair use — documentary filmmakers, academic librarians, dance archivists, poets, software preservationists. These are not law and do not bind courts, but they document community norms, and courts have occasionally cited them as evidence of reasonable practice.

Counsel with the specific practice. Fair use advice is contextual enough that experience in the relevant field matters. A documentary clearance lawyer, an academic publishing permissions lawyer, and a machine learning data lawyer are doing recognizably different jobs with the same statute.

Insurers. For film and publishing, the errors-and-omissions insurer effectively sets the clearance standard, and their requirements are more specific than the case law. Engage them early rather than discovering the requirements at the distribution stage.

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