The Supreme Court ruled against the Andy Warhol Foundation in a copyright dispute on Thursday, determining in a 7-2 decision the late artist violated a photographer’s copyright on her photo of the singer Prince.
American Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) sits in front of several paintings in his 'Endangered ... [+]
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith alleged copyright infringement, after the Andy Warhol Foundation granted Vanity Fair a license to use one of the pop artist’s Prince silkscreens in 2016, decades after the images were first created using her photograph.
The court rejected arguments made by the Andy Warhol Foundation that the artist didn’t violate copyright laws because he sufficiently transformed Goldsmith’s original shot.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Goldsmith’s “original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists.”
The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, argued that the court’s decision against Warhol “will stifle creativity of every sort” and “will impede new art and music and literature.”
In 1984, Goldsmith granted a limited license to Vanity Fair for a single use of the photo as the basis for a silkscreen by Warhol to accompany an article about the musician Prince. At the time, Warhol made 16 silkscreens, though just one ran in the magazine and Goldsmith has said she was unaware there were more. In 2016, the Warhol Foundation was paid $10,250 by Vanity Fair for the right to run another of Warhol’s silkscreens—”Orange Prince”—as the cover of the special edition following Prince’s death, while Goldsmith didn’t receive pay or credit. When Goldsmith began legal action, a New York federal district judge ruled in Warhol’s favor, arguing the work was transformative enough to be within the “fair use” exception to the copyright law. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the judgment, leading the Warhol Foundation to appeal to the Supreme Court. In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that an image is transformative enough to be exempt from copyright if it “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.”
“The use of a copyrighted work may nevertheless be fair if, among other things, the use has a purpose and character that is sufficiently distinct from the original,” wrote Sotomayor in the decision. “In this case, however, Goldsmith’s original photograph of Prince, and AWF’s copying use of that photograph in an image licensed to a special edition magazine devoted to Prince, share substantially the same purpose, and the use is of a commercial nature.”
Supreme Court rules against Andy Warhol Foundation in copyright case over Prince photo (NBC News)
Supreme Court Rules Against Andy Warhol in Copyright Case (New York Times)
Supreme Court rules against Warhol Foundation in Prince photo copyright case (Washington Post)