E&O Coverage for Fair Use

Bill McGeveran recounts an important milestone in the application of the fair use doctrine:  An E&O insurance carrier has written a policy on a work — a documentary film — whose use of copyrighted material is supported by the fair use doctrine, as elaborated by the Statement on Best Practices prepared by the Center for Social Media at American University (with significant help from documentary filmmakers themselves and the IP faculty at the Washington College of Law at AU), and as applied in this instance by a lawyer willing to put his or her own firm’s E&O policy on the line.