In Part I, I wrote that I hope the Court will find that AWF’s central argument fails on the “transformativeness” question presented and that it will reaffirm that this part of the fair use factor one inquiry must find at least some evidence of commentary upon the original work. Warhol’s Prince Series does not comment upon the photograph used, which ...
Copyright watchers were surprised when the Supreme Court granted Andy Warhol Foundation’s (AWF) petition for certiorari in its case against photographer Lynn Goldsmith. For deeper background, see older posts, but this is the dispute over Andy Warhol’s “Prince Series” silkscreen images of rock legend Prince made in 1984 using Goldsmith’s unpublished 1981 portrait photograph as a reference image. In March ...
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 ...
