Authorized Use – Specific Clauses

Specific use clauses clarify specific things that Authorized Users can do with the licensed product under the license. The general grant of license should cover the use case in broad strokes (e.g. “research, education or other non-commercial use”), and the “fair use” savings clause should also cover many of these specific use clauses (e.g. it can be a fair use to share a scholarly article). Nevertheless, having specific use clauses in addition to the general grant of license and the fair use savings clause can be beneficial for clarifying the details and scope of intended permitted uses.

Just bear in mind that within contracts applying U.S. law, more specific language can take precedence over general language in a contract. So, for example, even if there is a clause in a license agreement that preserves fair use (and inherently may permit some scholarly sharing), if it is later followed by a restrictive scholarly sharing clause, then that more specific language can govern how sharing may occur. This means that libraries and scholars must be mindful when negotiating specific use clauses as they may be contracting themselves out of rights they would otherwise have had under the general grant of license or fair use.