The estate of Andy Warhol lost its Supreme Court copyright fight with photographer Lynn Goldsmith on Thursday. The ruling deemed the pop artist’s use of Goldsmith’s 1981 photograph of the musician Prince in a silkscreen series to be an infringement of copyright.
For a Vanity Fair commission, Warhol created 14 silkscreens and two pencil illustrations based on the photo taken by Goldsmith for Newsweek magazine, which had not been authorised for use beyond the original commission. Goldsmith, 75, only learned of Warhol’s unauthorised works following Prince’s death in 2016.
The case centred on the legal question of fair use, and had been watched closely in the worlds of art and entertainment for its implications in the use of copyright-protected works, which under certain circumstances can be used without permission if the new work has a ‘transformative’ purpose.
The Supreme Court focused on the fact that both Warhol and Goldsmith’s images served the same commercial purpose: to depict Prince in a magazine. Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated that the photographer’s ‘original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists.’
