Mon, Apr 12th 2021 12:01pm
Cathy Gellis
This decision, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, came out only a few weeks ago, yet before the Supreme Court ruled in Google v. Oracle. In light of that latter decision it s not clear that this one is still good law. Then again, it s not clear it ever was.
The decision is the latest by a Court of Appeal eviscerating fair use. I recently wrote about the Ninth Circuit s ruling in Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix, which also undermined fair use. To be fair, this latest one is perhaps a little less egregious. In this case, for instance, the copyright holder the court ruled in favor of is still alive while the defending party (referred in the decision as AWF) is the successor of someone who is dead. Whereas in the Dr. Seuss case it was the other way around, with the court going out of its way to let the successor to a dead person s copyrights stick it to a live creator trying to make new works the dead person was never g