Fair Dealing in Indian Copyright Law

The object of copyright is to protect the author of the copyrighted work from any unlawful reproduction or exploitation of his or her work by others. On one hand copyright granted extensive rights to the authors and creators whereas on the other hand it sets out some limitations on the rights of the authors. The law does not permit one to appropriate him to what has been produced by the labor, skill and capital of another. This is the very foundation of Copyright Law. A fair dealing is a copying of the copyrighted work without the permission of the author. A fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for the purpose of research or private study or criticism or review, whether of that work or any other work shall not constitute an infringement of copyright. Fair dealing is the permitted copying of the copyrighted work. The term fair dealing has not been defined anywhere in copyright law but the court on several occasions elaborated and explained this doctrine. The aim of this paper is to analyze the scope and extent of doctrine of fair dealing with the help of national and international law and judicial interpretation.