Kingsfield · Research · Intellectual Property

What exclusive rights does a copyright owner hold in a protected work?

Published 2026-06-23 · U.S. federal law

Section 106 gives the copyright owner a bundle of exclusive rights: to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, and publicly perform and display the work.

The answer

The bundle of exclusive rights

17 U.S.C. § 106 grants the owner of copyright the exclusive rights to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works based on it, to distribute copies to the public, and to perform and display the work publicly. A third party who exercises any of these rights without authorization infringes, subject to the statutory limitations.

Rights are divisible and limited

The Section 106 rights are subject to the limitations in the following sections, including fair use. Each exclusive right can be transferred and owned separately, so a license to reproduce does not by itself grant the right to prepare derivative works.

The judged input

What the AI drafted

Submitted to the judge

This is an excerpt from a draft copyright infringement advisory memo — the kind of work product a lawyer generates with a legal-AI drafting tool, then has to stand behind. Kingsfield does not write it; it rules on the citations the model put in it. This draft cites two authorities; one of them is wrong.

AI draft excerpt — copyright infringement advisory memo

We advise that the vendor's planned conduct implicates more than one of the Company's exclusive rights. Under 17 U.S.C. § 106, the copyright owner holds the exclusive rights to reproduce the work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies, and to perform and display the work publicly. The vendor's adaptation and redistribution of the Company's software therefore reaches at least the reproduction and derivative-work rights. The source of these exclusive rights is 17 U.S.C. § 102.

The judge ruled on every citation as the draft used it — it accepted 17 U.S.C. § 106 and rejected 17 U.S.C. § 102. Here is why.

The verdict

How Kingsfield ruled

Ruled 2026-06-23

Each citation in the draft above was submitted to the Kingsfield judge and ruled against the primary-law corpus — Accept, Reject, or Inconclusive, per citation. These are live verdicts, not editorial. Each card shows the claim the draft made and the verbatim authority the verdict was rendered against.

Accept17 U.S.C. § 106

The draft claimed: The owner of copyright has the exclusive rights to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies to the public, and to perform and display the work publicly, subject to sections 107 through 122.

“§ 106 Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:”

Cite found; proposition supported by the cited text.

Reject17 U.S.C. § 102

The draft claimed: Section 102 grants the copyright owner the exclusive rights to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, and display the copyrighted work.

Cite found, but the cited text does not support the claim. 17 U.S.C. 102 defines the subject matter of copyright (original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium) and excludes ideas and procedures; the exclusive rights are granted by 17 U.S.C. 106. Regenerate with the correct authority.

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Kingsfield rules on every citation, quote, and proposition your AI produces, against the primary law we cover. Accept, Reject, or Inconclusive, per citation, with a signed Audit Capsule.

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This page is legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The draft shown is an illustration of a typical AI answer; verdicts reflect the cited authority in the Kingsfield corpus as of the ruling date shown above.