Three icons of American pop culture–Andy Warhol, Prince, and the Supreme Court of the United States1–converged this week when the Court heard oral arguments in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith. The case concerns whether a Warhol print based on a portrait of Prince by photographer Lynn Goldsmith constituted fair use or was instead an infringement of Goldsmith’s copyright. Warhol’s “Orange Prince” was one of a series of 16 works based on the same photograph, none with a license from Goldsmith. Goldsmith has asserted that this infringed her reproduction and derivative work rights in the original photograph. The images in question may be viewed at SCOTUSBlog’s summary of the oral argument.
Continue reading “How the Supreme Court Misses the Point on Fair Use”Month: October 2022
Fourteenth Amendment Personhood Deferred Again
Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Doe et al. v. McKee (No. 22-201), an appeal from the Rhode Island Supreme Court presenting squarely the question of whether unborn persons are entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection. The petitioners, including pro-life organizations, had challenged a 2019 Rhode Island law that permitted abortion prior to viability and, importantly, repealed an earlier law that established that “human life commences at the instant of conception and that said human life at the instant of conception is a person within the language and meaning of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States . . . .” The Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari has been reported as a setback for the personhood argument. No doubt it is.
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