Yesterday, New York federal judge Sidney Stein ruled that Richard Prince, one of the most famous appropriation artists in the world, infringed the copyright rights of photographers Donald Graham and Eric McNatt by using their works in the controversial “New Portraits” series. Prince and his co-defendant, gallery owner Lawrence Gagosian, are ordered to pay Graham and McNatt five times the ...
Lately, we’ve seen several headlines and comments from tech giants say that AI ventures simply cannot succeed if they are forced to contend with the copyrights in the billions of works they have scraped for the purpose of machine learning (ML). When these headlines are paired with the rampant assertions that ML is inherently fair use—a subject addressed in last ...
After the Supreme Court’s decision in AWF v. Goldsmith restored what many of us view as common sense to the fair use doctrine of transformativeness, the flurry of litigation against AI developers will test the same principle in a different light. As discussed on this blog and elsewhere, caselaw has produced two frameworks for considering whether the “purpose and character” of ...
On August 7, photographer Jeff Sedlik and tattoo artist Katherine Von Drachenberg (Kat Von D) filed motions for reconsideration of summary judgment, with both sides arguing that their allegations are favored by the Supreme Court’s decision in Goldsmith v. Warhol delivered on May 18, 2023, finding for plaintiff Lynn Goldsmith. The parties also filed oppositions on August 21. I’ll cut ...
In Justice Kagan’s blistering dissent in AWF v. Goldsmith, she stated the following: If Warhol had used Goldsmith’s photo to comment on or critique Goldsmith’s photo, he might have availed himself of that factor’s benefit (though why anyone would be interested in that work is mysterious). [Emphasis added] Kagan’s sweeping view that she could not imagine why there would be ...
