Copyright Law: A Brief Overview
A legal battle between the Andy Warhol Foundation and the photographer Lynn Goldsmith over a portrait of Prince is at the center of a pivotal discussion about copyright. Blame the appeals court judgment from 2021 declaring that Andy Warhol had no right to appropriate someone else’s photo of Prince into one of the Pop artist’s classic silk-screened portraits. On May 18, 2023 the Supreme Court sided with a photographer in a dispute with the Andy Warhol Foundation over the late artist’s use of her photos as the basis for his own series of portraits of Prince. The justices issued a narrow interpretation focused on one of four factors used by courts to determine the “fair use” of a copyrighted work and the “purpose and character” of the use. The factors include “the nature of a copyrighted work,” “the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole,” and “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted wo...