Such “transformative use” is often the key question when courts decide if something counts as a legal fair use. The foundation has argued the iconic artist’s changes transformed the Goldsmith’s original image, shifting it from a basic photo portrait into a new work of art. After she threatened to sue the Andy Warhol Foundation for copyright infringement, the group filed a preemptive lawsuit to prove that the works were legal. When Prince died suddenly from a drug overdose in 2016, Condé Nast magazine re-used Warhol’s image on the cover of a tribute issue – a prominent display that caught Goldsmith’s attention. Vanity Fair licensed her image for use in the magazine, but Warhol also created more than a dozen other versions, which were later sold to collectors, displayed in museums and licensed for use without the photographer’s consent. To create his images, Warhol used a portrait of the star taken in 1981 by Goldsmith. Warhol created his images in 1984 as artwork for a Vanity Fair article called “Purple Fame,” a sarcastic ode to the then-rising star and his place in American pop culture, which at one point opined that “escape from Prince is no longer possible.” They said the outcome of the case was “critical to the American music industry,” since sampling and interpolation might be regarded as fair use under Warhol’s “wide and manipulable” approach.ġ0 Times Andy Warhol Left His Stamp on Music “Creators, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists and software developers, both depend on the enforcement of their copyright rights … and sometimes invoke the fair use doctrine as a defense.”Īhead of Wednesday’s arguments, the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers’ Association filed a brief in the case, urging the Supreme Court to reject the arguments from Warhol’s foundation and endorse a more limited version of fair use. “The Supreme Court’s decision could have a far-reaching impact on many creative industries,” said Stephanie Bunting Glaser, an attorney at the law firm Patterson Belknap. How exactly to balance those two directly competing ideas – the question before the court on Wednesday – is both infamously difficult and extremely important. The last time the court did so was a landmark 1991 decision upholding 2 Live Crew‘s bawdy parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.”įair use is a crucial aspect of American copyright law, allowing for the re-use of protected works in certain circumstances it’s sometimes referred to as a First Amendment “safety valve” for copyright’s strict limits on speech. When the Supreme Court releases its decision on the Warhol case early next year, it will be the first time in more than three decades the justices have ruled on how creative works are covered by fair use. “Let’s say that I’m a Prince fan, which I was in the 80s,” Thomas began, before Justice Elena Kagan cut in: “No longer?” Thomas and the normally-staid Supreme Court gallery erupted in laughter, before the justice replied enigmatically: “Only on Thursday night.” In a lighter moment, Justice Clarence Thomas at one point began one of his questions by invoking the rock legend whose image is at the center of the case. Supreme Court Will Hear Case Over Warhol’s Prince Portraits “Anyone could turn Darth Vader into a hero, or spin off ‘All In The Family’ into ‘The Jeffersons,’ without paying the creators a dime.” “Copyrights will be at the mercy of copycats,” said Lisa Blatt, a veteran Supreme Court litigator at the law firm Williams & Connolly LLP. An attorney for Warhol’s foundation warned that a loss would “chill” creativity and make “countless” works illegal, a result he called “repugnant to copyright and to the First Amendment.” An attorney for Goldsmith countered that a ruling for Warhol would effectively render copyright protection meaningless. Supreme Court, as the justices weighed a closely-watched copyright case that could have a “far-reaching impact on many creative industries.”ĭuring a two-hour hearing, the high court heard heated arguments over whether the late Warhol made a legal “fair use” of a photograph of Prince when he used it as the basis for a set of his distinctive screen prints – or merely infringed the copyrights of Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who snapped it.īoth sides claimed the stakes were high. More than three decades after Andy Warhol‘s death and six years after Prince‘s sudden passing, the two pop culture icons took center stage Wednesday at the U.S.
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