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Copyright Policy

This copyright policy sets out how users are permitted to use our content and also explains the types of use that require the purchase of additional licences. This policy forms part of our terms and conditions. Thank you for reading this policy: our ability to invest in high quality journalism depends on our users complying with it. We reserve the right to change our copyright policy from time to time by publishing an updated policy on FT.com, which shall become effective and replace any previous policy with effect from publication. This version of the copyright policy was published on 31 May 2023.

What is copyright?

Copyright law gives the copyright owner the exclusive right to control the use of copyright protected works. All of the material published on our website and other digital/wireless platforms is protected by copyright law and should only be used as set out in the “How may I use FT content?” section below. Use that is made without our permission may therefore infringe our copyright which can result in personal and corporate liability. Where we state below that something is not allowed or permitted, then to do so is a breach of our terms and conditions: that is, it is a breach of contract, and may also violate copyright law.

How may I use FT content?

You may do the following:

  • View our content for your personal use on any device that is compatible with FT.com (this might be your PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet or other mobile device) and store our content on that device for your personal use;
  • Print single copies of articles on paper for your personal use;
  • Share links to articles by using any sharing tools we make available.

How may I republish or redistribute FT content?

Except as set out above, you may not copy FT content from FT.com or any third party source of FT content such as news aggregators and you may not republish or redistribute full text articles, for example by pasting them into emails or republishing them in any media, including websites, newsletters or intranets.

We recognise that users of the Internet want to share information with others. We therefore permit limited republishing and redistribution of FT content as set out below provided that this does not create a Substitute for FT’s own products or services. We define a Substitute as a product or service that reduces the need for users or other third parties to pay for FT content directly, or which creates revenue from the FT’s content to the detriment of FT’s own ability to generate revenues from that content.

As long as you do not create a Substitute, you may do the following:

  • Publish online, the original FT headline and a link to the article and the first 140 characters of an article (what we call teaser text);
  • Forward the original headlines, links and teaser text to other individuals;
  • Download our RSS feeds and view them for your personal use. We currently publish headlines and teaser text within our RSS feeds. You may also make an RSS feed available to third parties, users within an organisation you work for or users of a website that you publish, on condition that you comply with the restrictions set out below.

The restrictions that apply to use of our RSS feeds are that you:

  • only publish the feed for access via a web-based browser.
  • do not use or publish the feed as part of a paid for service or for other commercial gain.
  • publish the feed as it is made available on FT.com, so that you only include the headline and teaser content, and ensure that the headline links back to the full text article on FT.com.
  • attribute the feed to the FT as “© The Financial Times Limited [year]”.
  • do not archive the feed or any of its content.
  • comply with our guidelines on usage of FT logos.

Am I allowed to copy or summarise limited parts of FT full text content?

As specified above you may not republish or redistribute full text articles (except as permitted by any sharing tools we make available).

You may however republish or redistribute ”Summaries” of FT articles if you comply with the conditions set out below. “Summaries” can be either an “extract” or an “abstract”. By “extract” we mean 30 words copied verbatim from an FT article which are inserted into a longer original work . By “abstract” we mean a 30 word non-verbatim summary of the news or facts reported in an FT article which does not form part of a longer work and does not misrepresent the original FT article.

These are the conditions you must comply with in order to produce summaries:

  • you source FT as the author of any article from which you have derived a summary by way of an attribution such as “[journalist name] at the Financial Times reported that”, with a hypertext link from the word “Financial Times” to the original story published on FT.com;
  • in the case of abstracts, you make clear that the abstract has been produced by you by stating “this abstract from the Financial Times was produced by [name]”, with a hypertext link from the word “Financial Times” to the original story published on FT.com;
  • you ensure that your summaries do not in whole or in part form a Substitute for FT’s own products and services (see above for how we define Substitute). The more summaries you create the greater the risk of substitution. No individual or organisation may create, republish or redistribute more than ten summaries in aggregate each day, each one sourced from a different FT article that is published on the same day you create the summary;
  • you do not use or create summaries that promote or endorse any product or service; and
  • if FT notifies you that it believes you are creating, republishing or redistributing summaries outside of these parameters, you shall immediately cease doing so and your rights to create summaries shall be regarded as having been withdrawn, unless/until FT reaches an agreement with you regarding your use of FT articles.

Please note that these rights do not extend to content, data or other material published by FT that we licence from third parties (including stock exchange or other index providers) which you may not republish or redistribute.

How am I allowed to link to FT content?

If you would like to link to FT.com, please read and comply with the following guidelines and all applicable laws. A site or service that links to FT.com:

  • may display an FT logo (view our brand guidelines) to indicate the source of the link, but must not otherwise use any FT trade marks without permission from FT;
  • must not remove, distort or otherwise alter the size or appearance of the FT logo;
  • may link to the homepage of FT.com, and, provided that you comply with this copyright policy, may also link to other pages of FT.com;
  • must not be a Substitute (as defined above);
  • must not in any way imply that FT is endorsing it or its products or services;
  • must not misrepresent its relationship with FT or present false information about FT;
  • must not be a site or service that infringes any intellectual property or other right of any person or that otherwise does not comply with all relevant laws and regulations; and
  • must not be a site or service that contains content that could be construed as distasteful or offensive.

What am I not permitted to do with FT content?

You cannot do anything other than make use of the content as set out above, unless you buy the appropriate licence (see below for details). By way of example only, this means that you cannot:

  • If you are a registered user or subscriber, share your user name and password (which includes PINs) with anyone else. A password is for one person’s use. Sharing a password means a copy of our content may subsequently be made by someone who is not authorised to do so. Password sharing is a breach of our terms and conditions and is likely to result in an infringement of copyright. We monitor usage to detect password sharing.
  • Copy, publish or redistribute full text articles, photographs, graphics, tables or images in any way (except as permitted by any sharing tools we make available).
  • Create derivative works from our content, unless you are creating summaries as described above.
  • Photocopy or scan copies of articles.
  • Remove the copyright or or trade mark notice from any copies of FT content.
  • Use spidering technology or other datamining technologies to search and link to FT.com.
  • Create a database in electronic or structured manual from by systematically and/or regularly downloading, caching, printing and storing all or any FT content (by spidering or otherwise).
  • Use any of our content or data (including any associated metadata) in any manner for any machine learning and/or artificial intelligence purposes, including without limitation for the purposes of training or development of artificial intelligence technologies or tools or machine learning language models, or otherwise for the purposes of using or in connection with the use of such technologies, tools or models to generate any data or content and/or to synthesise or combine with any other data or content. 
  • Frame, harvest or scrape FT content or otherwise access FT content for similar purposes.
  • Use or attempt to use FT content outside the parameters we set depending on what subscription you have.

For more information please refer to "Copyright: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)"

 

If you have any questions on copyright or republishing our material, please contact our republishing team at [email protected].

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