Fair Use Doesn’t Mean You Can Copy Without Asking

Every digital business now runs on previews, tempting a customer with a taste of the whole before asking them to pay for it: a streaming platform’s fifteen-second clip, an online course’s free first module, a bookstore app that opens to a handful of sample pages. None of this feels like copying, since nobody walks away with the full work for free, and that instinct is exactly what Philippine copyright law does not automatically share.

This is a tension worth sitting with rather than rushing past. AJA Law works from real respect for the people who make creative work, alongside a genuine understanding of how quickly digital reuse, previews, samples, embedded clips, and increasingly AI-assisted remixing, has outpaced the examples the law was originally written around. The same creative economy already explored on this site, the one asking who owns a commissioned logo or a freelancer’s design, is now asking a related but different question: when can a business actually use someone else’s work in the Philippines without asking first, and when does that assumption run out?

Guidelines Explain the Existing Exceptions, They Don’t Create a New One

In March 2024, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines released its Guidelines on Statutory Fair Use through its Bureau of Copyright and Related Rights.¹ Worth being precise about what this document actually does: it explains exceptions that already existed in the IP Code, rather than creating a new circular or a new legal permission. It groups those exceptions into three categories. Some specific acts, such as private recitation, reporting of current events, and use in judicial proceedings, count as fair use without needing anything further, while others, including quoting a published work and using material to illustrate teaching, only qualify if they also satisfy the law’s general four-factor test.² A separate set of rules covers architecture, private reproduction, library reproduction, and adapting computer programs.

For a business considering a preview, a quote, or an excerpt, the general four-factor test is usually the one that matters: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work being used, how much of it is used relative to the whole, and the effect of that use on the market for the original. None of these factors decides the outcome alone, and a commercial purpose does not automatically fail the test, but it does weigh against it.

Good Faith Is Not a Defense

Philippine copyright infringement does not require proof of intent. The Supreme Court has confirmed that it is generally treated as an offense that does not depend on a guilty state of mind, meaning a business that genuinely, mistakenly believed its use qualified as fair use can still be found to have infringed.³ The law does allow a court to reduce the damages awarded where the party using the work did not know and had no reason to believe the use was infringing, but that is a mitigation of the penalty, not a defense to the underlying claim.

This is precisely why IPOPHL’s own Bureau of Copyright and Related Rights, in releasing the 2024 guidelines, still cautioned that anyone left in doubt after reading them should simply obtain permission. That caution reflects a real limit in what the guidelines can offer, not routine risk-averse phrasing.

A 2025 Supreme Court Case Shows How Close the Call Can Be

In February 2025, the Supreme Court decided a case directly on point for the kind of preview many digital businesses now offer.⁴ A mobile content distributor let users listen to twenty-second previews of ringtones before purchasing them, and the collecting society representing the underlying composers argued this required a separate license, since it amounted to an unauthorized public performance of their work. The Court ultimately agreed the preview counted as a communication to the public, but found the use fell within fair use once the four factors were applied, and upheld the dismissal of the infringement claim.

What makes the case especially instructive is that it was not a clean, unanimous result. Several justices wrote separate opinions, and one dissented specifically on the view that the preview functioned to promote the distributor’s own platform rather than simply helping a customer decide whether to buy a song, and so should not have counted as fair use at all. If a use this narrow, a twenty-second sample offered purely to support a purchase decision, still divided the Supreme Court, a business weighing a similar preview should treat the outcome as genuinely uncertain rather than assume its own case is the easy one.

What This Means Before You Launch a Preview, Quote, or Excerpt

The practical exercise is to work through the four factors honestly before the content goes live, not to treat the guidelines as a checklist that clears a use in advance. A preview that helps someone decide whether to buy the full work, as in the ringtone case, sits differently than a preview generous enough to substitute for the purchase itself, in much the same way that a quote credited to its source and used for genuine commentary, criticism, or education sits differently than one lifted mainly to make marketing copy sound more authoritative.

A few questions are worth asking before anything goes live: How much of the work is actually being shown or used, measured against the whole? Does the use genuinely help someone decide whether to get the full work, or does it function more like marketing dressed up as a preview? And would someone who saw or read the excerpt still have a real reason to seek out the original?

The line between fine and risky often comes down to exactly this kind of degree. A fifteen-second sample of a song that ends well before the chorus helps a shopper decide whether to buy it. A “preview” that plays three uninterrupted minutes of the same track, or a course platform that lets visitors watch the entire first lesson rather than a short clip of it, has drifted from helping a purchase decision toward simply delivering the product for free under a different name. The guidelines will not draw that line for a business in advance. Only an honest look at what is actually being given away will.

Where the analysis is close, the guidelines themselves point to the same answer the Supreme Court’s split opinions suggest: document the reasoning, and where real doubt remains, seek permission rather than proceed on assumption.

AJA Law reviews planned previews, quotes, and excerpts against the fair use factors before they go live, and helps secure permission or licensing where the analysis calls for it. If your business is weighing whether a specific use needs a license, our intellectual property team is glad to look at it with you before it becomes a dispute rather than after.

Need help understanding what this means for you?

Every situation depends on its own facts, documents, timing, and objectives. AJA Law can help you understand the legal issues involved, assess the practical implications, and identify sensible next steps.

Initial inquiries are welcome. There is no charge to contact us, and we will let you know if a formal consultation or engagement would be appropriate.

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Footnotes

1. Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines, “IPOPHL Releases Statutory Fair Use Guidelines to Clarify Rules on Copyright Exceptions,” March 4, 2024.
2. Republic Act No. 8293, Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, Sections 184 and 185.
3. ABS-CBN Corporation v. Gozon, G.R. No. 195956, March 11, 2015.
4. Filipino Society of Composers and Publishers v. Wolfpac Communications, Inc., G.R. No. 184661, February 25, 2025.