Intellectual Property Rights

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith

598 U.S. 508 (2023)

Facts

Photographer Lynn Goldsmith created a studio photograph of musician Prince.
In 1984, Vanity Fair obtained a limited licence to use the photograph once as an artist reference.
Artist Andy Warhol used it to create an image of Prince for the magazine.
Warhol also created additional works known collectively as the Prince Series.
After Prince’s death in 2016, the Andy Warhol Foundation licensed one of those works, Orange Prince, to Condé Nast for a magazine commemorating Prince.
Goldsmith received no licence fee or credit for that later use.
The Foundation sought a declaration that Warhol’s work was fair use.
The lower appellate court ruled against the Foundation.
The Supreme Court considered only the first fair-use factor as applied to the Foundation’s 2016 commercial licence.

Whether Warhol’s visual alteration and claimed new meaning made the later licensing use transformative.
How purpose and commercial character should be assessed where both works serve as magazine illustrations about the same person.
Whether a new aesthetic meaning is by itself sufficient under fair use.

The first fair-use factor examines the purpose and character of the challenged use.
A new meaning, message or artistic style is relevant but not automatically decisive.
Courts must consider the specific use alleged to be infringing, not merely compare the works in the abstract.
Where the original and secondary use:
share substantially the same purpose;
operate in the same commercial market;
and the secondary user receives a licence fee, the factor may favour the copyright owner.
Transformation cannot be defined so broadly that every adaptation becomes fair merely because it adds expression.

Warhol changed Goldsmith’s photograph through cropping, contrast, colour and his recognisable artistic style.
Those changes could communicate a different impression of Prince.
However, the Court focused on the Foundation’s 2016 commercial licence.
Goldsmith regularly licensed photographs of musicians to magazines for use in articles.
The Foundation licensed Orange Prince for the same general purpose: illustrating a magazine story about Prince.
Condé Nast paid the Foundation rather than licensing Goldsmith’s photograph.
In that particular market context, the secondary use functioned as a commercial substitute.
The Foundation argued that Warhol transformed Prince from a vulnerable person into an iconic image.
The Court held that judicial descriptions of new meaning cannot alone determine fair use.
Most derivative works add some new expression or message.
If that were enough, the copyright owner’s adaptation right would become extremely narrow.
The Court distinguished parody and criticism cases such as Campbell, where borrowing was justified because the new work commented upon the original.
The 2016 magazine use did not comment on Goldsmith’s photograph as a photograph.
It used the image to depict Prince in a publication.
The decision was deliberately limited.
The Court did not hold that every creation, museum display or non-commercial use of the Prince Series was infringing.
It decided only that the first factor favoured Goldsmith for this specific commercial licensing transaction.

The Supreme Court held, by a 7–2 majority, that the first fair-use factor favoured Goldsmith.
Warhol’s altered style and possible new meaning did not outweigh the substantially identical commercial licensing purpose.
The ruling was use-specific and did not decide every possible use of the Prince Series.
Use this case for: new artistic meaning does not automatically establish transformative fair use where the challenged use serves the same commercial purpose and licensing market as the original.