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Appendix A · Copyright
Why a search engine that returns short, attributed snippets is on solid ground.
This explains why we believe our product is consistent with established copyright frameworks in major jurisdictions. It is not legal advice and is not a substitute for review by your counsel.
Across jurisdictions, the law draws a practical line. On one side: copying to enable discovery. On the other: copying to redistribute content for consumption. Search engines sit on the first side. They share a recurring set of principles: transformative use, proportionality, non-substitution, attribution, technical-necessity exceptions, and the limits of database rights.
Working with relevant snippets is the more conservative path. It is also the better one for AI and quantitative work. Snippets raise the signal-to-noise ratio, normalize document length, prevent semantic dilution, conserve context windows, lower latency and cost, and reduce hallucination. Leading AI labs work with snippets rather than full texts, for the same reasons.
Authors Guild v. Google (2d Cir. 2015) upheld search copying and snippet view as fair use. Perfect 10 v. Amazon/Google (9th Cir. 2007) held image thumbnails transformative.
Temporary on-screen and cache copies fall within the temporary-copying exception. The press-publisher right excludes very short extracts and hyperlinking. Database rights turn on extraction of a substantial part.
A statutory exception covers temporary or technical copies (CDPA s.28A).
Fair dealing as a structured balancing test, with limited preview-type uses upheld.
Exceptions for data analysis and machine learning on lawfully accessed works, where use is transformative and non-competing.
Everything we do is lawful and ethical. So in principle we can discuss third-party intellectual-property-rights indemnity. The terms warrant a conversation between your team and ours.