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Abstract
The U.S. Court ofAppeals for the Second Circuit, in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Lynn Goldsmith and Lynn Goldsmith, Ltd., has ruled that contemporary artist Andy Warhol's 1984 images of musical artist Prince did not make fair use of photographer Lynn Goldsmith's 1981 photograph of the music legend, overturning the 2019 decision from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. THE DISTRICT COURT'S DECISION The district court, in a decision by Judge John G. Koeltl, granted summary judgment to AWF on its assertion of fair use, and dismissed Goldsmith's and LGL's counterclaim. In his opinion, Judge Koeltl explained that "fair use" is a statutory exception to copyright infringement and recited the four statutory factors used to determine whether a use is fair: (1) The purpose and character of the use; (2) The nature of the copyrighted work; (3) The substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) The effect on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.1 Although the district court found that the use of the Prince Series was commercial, it decided overall that the use was fair, primarily because it was transformative: [...]CIRCUIT APPEAL Goldsmith appealed to the Second Circuit primarily arguing that the district court's conclusion regarding transformative use "was grounded in a subjective underlying artistic message of the works, rather than an objective assessment of their purpose and character."