Andy Warhol painting the Statue of Liberty in Paris on April 22, 1986.
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The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling annulling the ruling. Andy Warhol The foundation was founded after a copyright dispute over the use of an image of the musician Prince by a famous photographer in an artwork created by Warhol.
The court ruled 7-2 in favor of photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who owned the copyright to a photograph of Prince that was published in Newsweek magazine at the time in 1981. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion against the decision, echoed by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Goldsmith was accused of copyright infringement by the Andy Warhol Foundation in 2016 after it licensed an image called “Orange Prince” featuring the musician Goldsmith to Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast. was suing. Orange Prince is one of Warhol’s 16. She made a silkscreen based on her photo.
In 1984, Goldsmith granted Vanity Fair a limited license to use the photograph as the basis for Warhol’s silkscreen, which was used to illustrate an article on Prince that year.
Musician Prince performs on stage at the 36th Annual NAACP Image Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on March 19, 2005.
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A federal district court ruled in 2016 that the Andy Warhol Foundation did not infringe Goldsmith’s copyright in relicensing the image because the derivative application of the artwork was fair use. was overturned by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Warhol’s artwork was “transformative” and conveyed a different meaning, so the Warhol Foundation’s claim about so-called fair use of the photograph defends Goldsmith’s copyright infringement claim. considered the only question of whether it is sufficient to Send us a message than the original photo.
In its majority opinion, the Supreme Court said, “Lynn Goldsmith’s original work, like that of any other photographer, is entitled to copyright protection, even to famous artists.” “Such protection includes the right to create derivative works that transform the original.”
The opinion goes on to say that “use of copyrighted works may be fair if:”
Among other things, its use has a purpose and nature that is sufficiently different from the original. “
“In this case, however, Goldsmith’s original photograph of Prince and the copy-use of that photograph in the licensed image for the Prince magazine by the Asian Women’s Fund share substantially the same purpose and that The use is of a commercial nature.”