FAIR USE OF PARODY, SATIRE, CARICATURE, AND PASTICHE

Abstract

While parody, satire, caricature and pastiche (“PSCP”) works have existed for centuries, their positions in various copyright regimes around the world remain uncertain. In Singapore, the extent to which the Copyright Act protects PSCP works is currently unclear. In particular, it is uncertain what is required for a dealing with a PSCP work to be considered a fair dealing under section 35, or for its use to be considered fair use under section 183 of the draft Copyright Bill, which restates the current open-ended fair dealing defence as fair use defence. Unlike the UK’s and Australia’s categorical fair dealing exceptions for PSCP, Singapore’s fact-dependent balancing-based fair use defence may discourage PSCP authors from producing PSCP works due to their inherently higher risk of copyright infringement. In light of this, this paper proposes guidelines to better assist local courts with distinguishing legitimate PSCP works from illegal rip-offs, so that only the former are afforded fair use protection. By retaining a holistic balancing approach, these guidelines remain sufficiently flexible to adapt to the diverse factual matrices of PSCP works and yet provide adequate certainty for the application of each fair use factor.