Warhol settles ‘fair use’ clash over Prince image
The case led justices to pore over the correct application and interpretation of key legal principle | Warhol Foundation settles but still maintains argument that its use of image was ‘fair use’.
The Andy Warhol Foundation and photographer Lynn Goldsmith have resolved their high-profile copyright dispute concerning the ‘fair use’ of an image of the late musician, Prince.
In a joint court filing, made at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, both parties agreed that Warhol's estate will pay Goldsmith more than $21,000, including $11,000 in court costs.
A key legal principle
The case had wound its way to the US Supreme Court last year, leading justices to pore over the correct application and interpretation of the legal principle of ‘fair use’.
They delivered a fractured 7-2 decision in May 2023, resulting in a loss for the Foundation which had denied infringing photographer Goldsmith’s copyright.
The image was one of several commissioned by Newsweek magazine in 1981 for an article about the musician—for which Goldsmith received $400.
Warhol later used the photograph under a one-time-only licence, granted by Goldsmith, to create his Prince Series for Vanity Fair magazine in 1984.
After Prince died in 2016, Condé Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair, bought a licence from the Foundation to publish Warhol’s Orange Prince image on the cover of the magazine.
After Goldsmith complained, the Foundation sued her for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement, arguing that it was allowed to use the image under the legal tenet of fair use. Goldsmith then counterclaimed for infringement.
Warhol: Prince Series still ‘fair use’
In its decision, delivered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court found that “Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists”.
Drawing upon the protections afforded by the US Copyright Act, the court found that Warhol’s“copying use of” Goldsmith’s photograph“…share substantially the same purpose, and the use is of a commercial nature”.
Warhol did maintain in its settlement filing last week, however, that it still believed that the “the original creation of the Prince Series was fair use," and that “nothing in the Supreme Court's opinion undermines that view”.
Goldsmith added in the settlement filing that she was not pressing claims that the series violated her rights because the statute of limitations had expired.
The case is Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v Goldsmith, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:17-cv-02532.
Roman Martinez and Andrew Gass of Latham & Watkins; Luke Nikas and Maaren Shah of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan represented Warhol.
Thomas Hentoff of Williams & Connolly; Barry Werbin of Herrick Feinstein acted on behalf of Goldsmith.
