Compiling Conference Material Being Charged with Excerpting　District Court Indicated It to Be Fair Use of a Work

　An associate professor of the National Taiwan University was charged with excerpting the author’s work in the process of compiling the conference material for the Youth Hub Conference Meeting (Chinese: 青年國是會議) pre-conference reading material published on 28 August 2004.  The author claimed for damages against the associate professor at the amount of TWD1,000,000.  The Shilin District Court rejected the author’s claim for damages against the defendant by indicating that the published article is only for the internal reference of the government organizations.

　The defendant said that she was only responsible for editing and compiling the conference material for National Youth Commission (NYC) and not the author himself.  Moreover, the defendant indicated that NYC has reached a settlement with the author and she did not understand why she was requested to publish a notice of apology in the newspapers and to pay for the damages claimed by the author while a settlement was reached between NYC and the author.

　The court ruled that the reproduction of the work complies with the fair use of a work as regulated in the Copyright Act in consideration of the facts that (a) the reproduced work was published in the comments section of the conference material, (b) the reproduced work can be identified at a glance to be a direct quotation from an expert’s opinions, (c) the reproduced work was not to be used to increase the value of the defendant’s own work, and (d) the reproduced work was only for internal reference during the conference.  In conclusion, the defendant’s quotation of the work conforms to the fair use of a work and is free from the alleged charge.  (2008.03)

/DC