The work of an institutional information repository involves the reproduction and promulgation of academic work for public use. It also invariably involves submitting or publishing materials to or in conjunction with a publisher, necessitating executive members and authors having to negotiate any arising copyright issues. From the point view of copyright law, an Institutional repository is charged with promoting the development of national culture, and therefore there should be a reasonable way for solving copyright issues. This paper focuses on the legal analysis of academic product copyright ownership and if the fair use system could be adopted as the legal basis for an Institutional repository. Based on the above analysis, this paper tries to provide some solutions for Institutional repositories to be recategorized as reference resources.