Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith

598 U.S. 508
CourtSupreme Court of the United States
DecidedMay 18, 2023
Docket21-869
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 598 U.S. 508 (Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of the United States primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. 508 (2023).

Opinion

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2022 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC. v. GOLDSMITH ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

No. 21–869. Argued October 12, 2022—Decided May 18, 2023 In 2016, petitioner Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. (AWF) licensed to Condé Nast for $10,000 an image of “Orange Prince”—an orange silkscreen portrait of the musician Prince created by pop artist Andy Warhol—to appear on the cover of a magazine com- memorating Prince. Orange Prince is one of 16 works now known as the Prince Series that Warhol derived from a copyrighted photograph taken in 1981 by respondent Lynn Goldsmith, a professional photog- rapher. Goldsmith had been commissioned by Newsweek in 1981 to photograph a then “up and coming” musician named Prince Rogers Nelson, after which Newsweek published one of Goldsmith’s photos along with an article about Prince. Years later, Goldsmith granted a limited license to Vanity Fair for use of one of her Prince photos as an “artist reference for an illustration.” The terms of the license included that the use would be for “one time” only. Vanity Fair hired Warhol to create the illustration, and Warhol used Goldsmith’s photo to create a purple silkscreen portrait of Prince, which appeared with an article about Prince in Vanity Fair’s November 1984 issue. The magazine credited Goldsmith for the “source photograph” and paid her $400. Af- ter Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair’s parent company (Condé Nast) asked AWF about reusing the 1984 Vanity Fair image for a special edition magazine that would commemorate Prince. When Condé Nast learned about the other Prince Series images, it opted instead to pur- chase a license from AWF to publish Orange Prince. Goldsmith did not know about the Prince Series until 2016, when she saw Orange Prince on the cover of Condé Nast’s magazine. Goldsmith notified AWF of her belief that it had infringed her copyright. AWF then sued Goldsmith for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement or, in the 2 ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. v. GOLDSMITH Syllabus

alternative, fair use. Goldsmith counterclaimed for infringement. The District Court considered the four fair use factors in 17 U. S. C. §107 and granted AWF summary judgment on its defense of fair use. The Court of Appeals reversed, finding that all four fair use factors favored Goldsmith. In this Court, the sole question presented is whether the first fair use factor, “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educa- tional purposes,” §107(1), weighs in favor of AWF’s recent commercial licensing to Condé Nast. Held: The “purpose and character” of AWF’s use of Goldsmith’s photo- graph in commercially licensing Orange Prince to Condé Nast does not favor AWF’s fair use defense to copyright infringement. Pp. 12–38. (a) AWF contends that the Prince Series works are “transformative,” and that the first fair use factor thus weighs in AWF’s favor, because the works convey a different meaning or message than the photograph. But the first fair use factor instead focuses on whether an allegedly infringing use has a further purpose or different character, which is a matter of degree, and the degree of difference must be weighed against other considerations, like commercialism. Although new expression, meaning, or message may be relevant to whether a copying use has a sufficiently distinct purpose or character, it is not, without more, dis- positive of the first factor. Here, the specific use of Goldsmith’s photo- graph alleged to infringe her copyright is AWF’s licensing of Orange Prince to Condé Nast. As portraits of Prince used to depict Prince in magazine stories about Prince, the original photograph and AWF’s copying use of it share substantially the same purpose. Moreover, AWF’s use is of a commercial nature. Even though Orange Prince adds new expression to Goldsmith’s photograph, in the context of the chal- lenged use, the first fair use factor still favors Goldsmith. Pp. 12–27. (1) The Copyright Act encourages creativity by granting to the crea- tor of an original work a bundle of rights that includes the rights to reproduce the copyrighted work and to prepare derivative works. 17 U. S. C. §106. Copyright, however, balances the benefits of incentives to create against the costs of restrictions on copying. This balancing act is reflected in the common-law doctrine of fair use, codified in §107, which provides: “[T]he fair use of a copyrighted work, . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching . . . , scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” To determine whether a particular use is “fair,” the statute enumerates four factors to be considered. The factors “set forth general principles, the appli- cation of which requires judicial balancing, depending upon relevant circumstances.” Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U. S. ___, ___. The first fair use factor, “the purpose and character of the use, in- cluding whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023) 3

educational purposes,” §107(1), considers the reasons for, and nature of, the copier’s use of an original work. The central question it asks is whether the use “merely supersedes the objects of the original creation . . . (supplanting the original), or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or different character.” Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569, 579 (internal quotation marks and citations omit- ted). As most copying has some further purpose and many secondary works add something new, the first factor asks “whether and to what extent” the use at issue has a purpose or character different from the original. Ibid. (emphasis added). The larger the difference, the more likely the first factor weighs in favor of fair use. A use that has a fur- ther purpose or different character is said to be “transformative,” but that too is a matter of degree. Ibid. To preserve the copyright owner’s right to prepare derivative works, defined in §101 of the Copyright Act to include “any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,” the degree of transformation required to make “trans- formative” use of an original work must go beyond that required to qualify as a derivative. The Court’s decision in Campbell is instructive. In holding that par- ody may be fair use, the Court explained that “parody has an obvious claim to transformative value” because “it can provide social benefit, by shedding light on an earlier work, and, in the process, creating a new one.” 510 U. S., at 579. The use at issue was 2 Live Crew’s copy- ing of Roy Orbison’s song, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” to create a rap deriva- tive, “Pretty Woman.” 2 Live Crew transformed Orbison’s song by add- ing new lyrics and musical elements, such that “Pretty Woman” had a different message and aesthetic than “Oh, Pretty Woman.” But that did not end the Court’s analysis of the first fair use factor.

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Bluebook (online)
598 U.S. 508, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/andy-warhol-foundation-for-visual-arts-inc-v-goldsmith-scotus-2023.