Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Florida

Re: using press releases

The whole concept of a press release is that the author WANTS others to reproduce and publish it. Particularly if you take the whole thing, you have an implied license. Slightly shakier ground if you significantly edit it, although again I would argue that industry custom in the media is to publish excerpts and that there is an implied license to do so.

Best wishes,

LDWG

Re: using press releases

I think some elaboration of the correct advice by attorney Graves would be useful.

Any work of art is copyrighted automatically by law upon creation. However, press releases purport to be news, and fair use principles generally allow use of news, as otherwise news might be stifled by copyright.

The warning I would like to add is that it is not up to you to decide what is a press release and what is not. If the item is clearly a press release then you are unlikely to run into any objection if you use it. If the item is a data sheet or spec or review, etc. the line is gray and you need to exercise some care. One option is to just hyperlink to the "press release" with an indication that this is their press release, not yours. The risk with that is press release links tend to go dead pretty quickly, so you may need lots of updating.