Many copyright observers, me included, believe the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Google v. Oracle was deeply flawed because rather than answer the copyrightability question presented (i.e. whether APIs are properly a subject of protection), the Court instead deconstructed that analysis and spread it across the four factors of the fair use test. As a result of that decision, copyright case law was left with a fair use opinion so over-broad in some of its reasoning that it also explicitly stresses that its findings should be read as unique to that case and not interpreted to disturb fair use doctrine in general. Warhol
And rightsholders should be very glad the Court sought to limit that opinion because almost immediately on the heels of the decision, the Andy Warhol Foundation filed a petition for en banc rehearing at the Second Circuit, principally on the basis that Google v. Oracle had altered the fair use analysis in its favor. At issue is Warhol’s use of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s unpublished photograph of Prince (see background below), and as stated in earlier posts, I would personally find non-infringement in the Warhol screens, but not for most of the reasons presented by AWF, and especially not for the reasons adopted in Google.
What was most concerning for creators about the Google decision was the very broad opinion (mostly discussed in the analysis of fair use factor four on potential market harm) that general social purpose may be served by finding fair use of even verbatim copying of protected works. Thus, AWF argued that, just like software innovation serves social purpose, so too, does fine art serve a social purpose, even where verbatim copying exists.. And while those generalizations are true, one can imagine how a too liberal reading of the “social benefit” premise might find fair use in almost anything.[1] Thus, AWF’s petition for rehearing was the first test of the Court’s stated limitations in Google, and here, the Second Circuit was unequivocal. In a withering 63-page opinion, it responded specifically to the argument that Google v. Oracle had changed the law thus:
In particular, the Supreme Court in Google took pains to emphasize that the unusual context of that case, which involved copyrights in computer code, may well make its conclusions less applicable to contexts such as ours. Thus, while Google did indeed find that the precise copying and incorporation of copyrighted code into a new program could (and did, on the particular facts of the case) constitute fair use, the opinion expressly noted that ‘copyright’s protection may be stronger where the copyrighted material . . . serves an artistic rather than a utilitarian function.’
And to further emphasize that the outcome in Google had not altered fair use doctrine as AWF asserted, the opinion states:
And indeed, the Supreme Court did not leave that conclusion to inference, expressly advising that in addressing fair use in this new arena, it ‘ha[d] not changed the nature of those [traditional copyright] concepts.’
So, this is an odd one to comment upon for me because I believe the fair use reasoning in Google v. Oracle is very bad law, while I find the Second Circuit’s analyses in Goldsmith to be generally good law, albeit arriving at a conclusion with which I disagree. Most importantly for rightsholders, though, is that the first attempt to exploit the Google decision beyond the limits of a certain type of computer code has failed. And that is certainly very good law.
Background on AWF v. Goldsmith (reprinted from earlier post)
Lynn Goldsmith captured the photograph at issue in 1981, during a truncated photo session with the semi-reclusive musical artist Prince Rodgers Nelson, who was then barely known to mainstream audiences as Prince. Goldsmith contends that she made certain creative choices resulting in an image of the “vulnerable human being” behind the persona. The photograph was never published but was licensed in 1984 (unbeknownst to Goldsmith) to Vanity Fair as a “reference photo” to produce an illustration to accompany a story about musician’s rise to stardom. In fact, the photo was used by Andy Warhol make a series of silkscreens similar to those he has made of Marilyn Monroe, Mao Zedong, etc., all using photographs as original sources.
Goldsmith was not aware of the existence of the Warhol screens until 2016 when, after Prince’s death, Vanity Fair published a special edition with one of the Warhol versions on the cover. At that time, Goldsmith communicated to the Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) that the works may infringe the copyright on her still unpublished photo, and in response, AWF filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement or, barring that, a finding of fair use. The district court held the Warhol screens to be fair use, primarily by following the Second Circuit ruling in Cariou v. Prince, but on appeal, the court reversed, finding the Warhol screens are not fair uses.
[1] Notably, the Court could have served the same intent by finding APIs to be uncopyrightable, which would have been a cleaner ruling with respect to copyright law in general.
