“Common wisdom” about haiku is often incorrect. Unfortunately, that appears to hold true in the realm of copyright law and its Fair Use Doctrine, as applied to haiku poetry. Because haiku are such short poems, many commentators have suggested that copying any part of a haiku (and especially all or most of one) falls outside of Fair Use protection. Since such a belief clearly deters scholarship and criticism of haiku, and seems foolish as a matter of public policy, I decided to delve into the subject to see if the conclusion is valid.
Despite the skeptics, the law usually makes sense, when its complexities are explored and understood. Therefore, I was not surprised by my basic finding:
There is no blanket rule against quoting part or all of a haiku. Context is everything. The Fair Use Doctrine can give significant protection to scholarship or criticism that requires the use of all or a significant portion of an individual haiku in order to effectively accomplish its Sec. 107 purposes.