A Clear-Cut Win for Artists or a Stifling Effect on Artistic Creation? How Copyright Law Experts View the Supreme Court’s Warhol Decision
variety.comCynthia Littleton Business Editor Purpose and character. These are now solidly enshrined as the buzzwords of copyright law on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 7-2 ruling earlier this week in the case involving the estate of Andy Warhol and photographer Lynn Goldsmith.
The decision at first blush seemed to be a clear-cut win for copyright owners and artists who create original works. But the court’s majority decision, penned with verve by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, is already proving divisive among experts on intellectual property rights.
It demonstrates the difficulty of setting up hard and fast rules around highly subjective questions, such as when an artistic or literary work is “transformative” of an earlier work and whether its ultimate use is for commercial purposes, or not.
The case has been closely watched in part because it’s sure to have implications for the tidal wave of AI-generated art and literary works that are to emerge, and the still-larger wave of litigation likely to follow.
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