The 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court have made a ruling in a case involving an Ed Sullivan Show clip in the musical Jersey Boys. The Court has ruled that showing a 7 second clip of Ed Sullivan introducing the music group that is used in the histrolically based musical Jersey Boys was tansformative under the fair use doctorine and therefore is an exception to the copyright infringement claim brought by copyright holder. Though the fair use doctrine is a grey-area of the law, that is heavily fact intensive, the main factors that are explored in determining fair use are the purpose and character of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the copyrighted work.
Read a more in depth article on this matter here.
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