General Category > SCOTUS News

Supreme Court: Andy Warhol's Prince Prints Not 'Transformative' Enough for Fair Use

(1/1)

Kamaji:
Supreme Court: Andy Warhol's Prince Prints Not 'Transformative' Enough for Fair Use

The case could have long-term implications for how broadly fair use can be applied.

JOE LANCASTER
5.19.2023

The Supreme Court ruled this week on Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, and the decision could have a transformative effect on copyright law. The ruling was so heated, it had two of the Court's liberal justices sniping at each other in the footnotes.

When Vanity Fair ran an article about the musician Prince in 1984, it commissioned pop artist Andy Warhol for a feature image. Using a 1981 black-and-white photo as a reference, Warhol created a silkscreen portrait of just the singer's face, cropped, flattened, and colored with heavily saturated purple. Photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who took the original photo, granted a one-time license to use the image for the article in exchange for a source credit and $400.

After completing the image, Warhol created 15 variations of the same image in different colors and styles, akin to his previous series of different-colored Marilyn Monroe prints. Warhol held onto the so-called "Prince Series" until his death in 1987, at which point the prints became property of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (AWF), established as part of Warhol's estate and in accordance with his will.

After Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair prepared a special issue to commemorate his life. For the cover of the magazine, it licensed a Warhol variation from the Prince Series, Orange Prince, from the AWF for $10,000, without involving Goldsmith. Goldsmith says she first became aware of the Prince Series with the release of the commemorative issue. When Goldsmith told the AWF that Orange Prince infringed on her intellectual property and she was considering legal action, the AWF sued her first, seeking a declaratory judgment that the image was "fair use" and did not constitute infringement.

*  *  *

The decision may be a boon to photographers, many of whose work often goes uncredited. Animal and portrait photographer Jill Greenberg said on Instagram, "Amazing news for photographers" and offered Goldsmith her congratulations. The National Press Photographers Association, which joined an amicus brief in support of Goldsmith, tweeted happily after the decision.

But the ruling could hurt artists who use existing works as a basis for new creations. In the 1991 case Grand Upright Music v. Warner Bros Records, the Supreme Court clamped down on unauthorized sampling in music, effectively ending an innovative era of hip hop. Now only the wealthiest artists can make commercial use of samples in a way that talented up-and-comers once did.

Last year, University of Michigan Law School professor Paul Szynol wrote in The Atlantic, "No one starts from scratch; no one creates in a vacuum….But what if you're barred from the building blocks that would allow you to create your project? What if you can't access those original materials—say, a photograph of an emerging musician—because they're copyrighted and, legally speaking, not free for the taking?"

*  *  *

Source:  https://reason.com/2023/05/19/supreme-court-andy-warhols-prince-prints-not-transformative-enough-for-fair-use/

Kamaji:
There has to be some sort of middle ground; I'm just not sure where it lies.

Navigation

[0] Message Index