Court to hear battle over Warhol's Prince paintings

WASHINGTON • In a case that could help clarify when and how artists can make use of others' works, the United States Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide on a copyright dispute between a photographer and Andy Warhol's estate over the artist's 1984 paintings of rock star Prince.

The justices took up the Andy Warhol Foundation's appeal of a lower court ruling that his paintings - based on a photo of Prince that photographer Lynn Goldsmith had shot for Newsweek magazine in 1981 - were not protected by the copyright law doctrine called fair use. This doctrine permits unlicensed use of copyright-protected works under certain circumstances.

Goldsmith, 74, countersued Warhol's estate for infringement in 2017 over his unlicensed paintings of Prince after the estate asked a Manhattan federal court to find that his works did not violate her rights. Warhol, who died in 1987, often based his art on photographs.

Goldsmith, who has said she did not learn about the unlicensed works until after Prince died in 2016, asked the court to block Warhol's estate from making further use of her work and for an unspecified amount of monetary damages.

A judge ruled that Warhol's works were protected against Goldsmith's infringement claims by the fair-use doctrine, finding they transformed Goldsmith's portrayal of Prince as a "vulnerable human being" by depicting him as an "iconic, larger-than-life figure".

After Goldsmith challenged that decision, the New York-based US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last year found that Warhol's paintings had not made fair use of the photo.

The Andy Warhol Foundation asked the Supreme Court in December to overturn the 2nd Circuit decision, arguing that it created "a cloud of legal uncertainty" for an entire genre of art like Warhol's.

Goldsmith said in a statement that she looked forward to continuing her legal fight at the Supreme Court.

"I fought this suit to protect not only my own rights, but also the rights of all photographers and visual artists to make a living by licensing their creative work - and also to decide when, how and even whether to exploit their creative works or license others to do so," she said.

REUTERS