Fair Dealing in Canadian Copyright Law: What Businesses Can and Cannot Use

Businesses quote articles, reference competitors, screenshot other websites for comparison, and reuse snippets of other people's content all the time, often without asking permission first. Sometimes that's perfectly legal. Fair dealing in Canadian copyright law is the exception that allows limited use of copyrighted material without a licence — but it is narrower, and more fact-specific, than most business owners assume.

This article walks through what fair dealing actually permits, the test used to assess it, and the mistakes that turn a defensible use into an infringement claim.

What Fair Dealing Is — and Isn't

Fair dealing is a defence built into Canada's copyright law: even though copying, quoting, or reproducing someone else's work would normally require their permission, certain uses for certain purposes are allowed without a licence or payment.

It is not a general "small amount is always fine" rule, and it is not the same as the American concept of "fair use," which is broader and more flexible. Canadian fair dealing only applies if the use fits within a recognized purpose and is otherwise fair — both conditions have to be met.

The Recognized Purposes

Fair dealing only protects uses that fall within specific purposes, including:

• Research and private study
• Education
• Parody and satire
• Criticism and review
• News reporting

A use that doesn't fit one of these purposes cannot rely on fair dealing at all, no matter how limited the copying is. Using a competitor's marketing copy in your own advertising, for example, is not research, criticism, or news reporting — fair dealing wouldn't apply, regardless of how small the excerpt is.

The Fairness Test

Fitting a recognized purpose is only the first step. The dealing also has to be genuinely fair, weighed against factors such as:

1. The purpose of the dealing — is it genuinely for one of the recognized purposes, or marketing dressed up as commentary?
2. The character of the dealing — how the material was used and how widely it was distributed
3. The amount used — copying a small, necessary portion supports fairness more than reproducing the whole work
4. Alternatives to the dealing — could the same point have been made without using the copyrighted material?
5. The nature of the work — published or unpublished, confidential or public
6. The effect on the market for the original work — does the use compete with or substitute for the original?

No single factor is decisive. A business that copies a large portion of a competitor's report, even while framing it as "commentary," may find the fairness test doesn't go its way.

Common Business Mistakes

• Assuming "for internal use only" is automatically fair dealing. Internal use isn't one of the recognized purposes on its own.
• Treating attribution as a substitute for a licence. Crediting the source is good practice, but it doesn't make an otherwise unfair dealing fair.
• Reusing whole articles or images "for context." Reproducing an entire work rarely supports a fair dealing defence, even for a legitimate purpose like review or criticism.
• Confusing fair dealing with fair use. Content advice written for a US audience often overstates what's permitted in Canada.
• Assuming non-commercial use is automatically fair. Commercial purpose weighs against fairness, but a non-commercial purpose doesn't guarantee a use is fair either.

When to Get a Licence Instead

If your intended use doesn't clearly fit a recognized purpose, or you're using more of the work than is genuinely necessary, the safer and more predictable path is to ask for permission or license the content properly. This matters most for anything central to a marketing campaign, product, or publication — a licence usually costs far less than defending an infringement claim.

Frequently asked questions