The Andy Warhol Foundation lost a copyright case in the US Supreme Court. These release reports Reuters.
The lawsuit was won by photographer Lynn Goldsmith. He accused the artist of using the singer Prince’s photo without permission in the Orange Prince painting. The work is one of twelve silkscreen portraits of Prince on canvas created by Warhol in 1984.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 2nd District Court of New York’s ruling that Warhol’s work based on a 1981 photograph of Goldsmith did not constitute fair use of a copyrighted work.
Goldsmith sued the artist’s foundation in 2017. According to the photographer, the singer became aware of the copyright infringement after Prince’s death in 2016. Courts have considered whether a new study has a “transformative” purpose, such as parody, education, or criticism, to determine fair use.
Representatives of the 2nd District Court of New York said judges should not “play the role of art critic” in assessing the meaning of the painting. Instead, representatives of the law took it upon themselves to decide whether the new work differed from the old in artistic purpose and character. Under this definition, the district court ruled that Warhol’s paintings were closer to an adaptation than a transformation of Goldsmith’s photograph.