Criticism, Review, Quotation and News Reporting
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, c. 48, s. 30
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
A snippet reproduction rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 30(1ZA) provides that copyright in a work is not infringed by the use of a quotation from it, whether for criticism or review or otherwise, provided the work has been made available to the public, the use is fair dealing, the extent of the quotation is no more than required for the purpose it is used for, and it carries a sufficient acknowledgement (unless impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise); a contract term purporting to override this quotation exception is unenforceable.
Section 30(1) separately permits fair dealing with a work for criticism or review, and section 30(2) permits fair dealing with a work, other than a photograph, for the purpose of reporting current events, each subject to a sufficient-acknowledgement requirement.
None of these provisions carries a headline-length or short-extract cap distinct from the fair-dealing and extent-justified tests, and no reported UK decision has applied section 30 specifically to a systematic news aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as opposed to an individual quoting a published work.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
official statute text, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, s. 30, legislation.gov.uk