Blog editor and partner in our IP group, Joe Grasser, covers one of the year’s most intriguing IP cases, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith et al, Case No. 21-869, as part of INDICAM’s podcast series “IPxSUMMER 2023 around the world”.  As many will recall, SCOTUS recently upheld a ruling that an early 1980s Andy Warhol’s photograph of the artist Prince was not fair use.  The case – and the SCOTUS ruling – have many in the art world still thinking through the impact.  Download and listen in on the discussion here.   

“Ultimately the dispute at issue was:  does Prince made by Warhol, is that a fair use in the context of being used on the Vanity Fair magazine when compared to the original photograph?”

“The Idea of copyright is actually a bundle of different rights… one of the copyright rights is the right to prepare derivate works (e.g., turning a book into a movie, a translation of a book from one language to another).  It’s a way where you take your original work and add new expression to it.  And you do it sufficiently that it’s sufficiently different, that it’s a new a different thing.”

“Looking forward, what do we say about other fair uses?  You have to look at the use, not the work, but the use.”