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The information provided here deals with three basic issues involved in the permissions process:
Whether permission is necessary. If it isn't needed, you can save time and money.
What types of work you are using. The permissions process often varies according to what type of work you want to use --such as photographs, text, artwork, music, trademark or a person's image.
How you plan to use the work. Obtaining permission also depends on how you use the work--such as in an article, on T-shirts, posted at a website, shown in a video or film or included in an academic publication. Depending on which issue you're dealing with, you may want to focus on different chapters of the book. Below we outline the chapters that deal with each of these specific issues.
1. Whether Permission Is Necessary
Permission is not always necessary to use creative materials. The section on the public domain deals with materials that are not protected by copyright law. The section on fair use explains the copyright principle that enables limited uses of materials without permission. The section on releases discusses when permission is needed to use a real person's image. The information about copyright research explains how to research whether copyright protection exists, and if so, who owns the copyright.
2. What Types of Work You Are Using
This book deals with the following types of materials: text, photographs, artwork, music, trademarks, characters and images of real people. The type of material used affects the type of permission, the fee and the permissions process. For example, the rules for locating photographers, musicians and writers are different, as are the permission agreements for using trademarked versus copyrighted material.
3. How You Plan to Use the Work
Creative materials can be used in books, journals, movies, recordings, video, websites, software programs, in artwork and on merchandise. The medium in which you use the material and the rights that you need affect the permissions process. The rights you obtain may include certain limitations: how long you may use the material, where you may distribute your project and whether you have exclusive use of the material.
 For information about any changes that have occurred since publication of this edition visit Nolo’s Legal Update web page at http://www.nolo.com/support/updates.cfm
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©2005-2008 The Board of Trustees
of the Leland Stanford Junior University. With the exception of the Nolo Copyright and Fair Use Overview, this work is
licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.