Opinion of the Court
A typical use of a celebrity photograph is to accompany stories about the celebrity, often in magazines. For example, Goldsmith licensed her photographs of Prince to illustrate stories about Prince in magazines such as Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and People. Supra, at 3–6. She even licensed her photographs for that purpose after Prince died in 2016. Supra, at 7. A photographer may also license her creative work to serve as a reference for an artist, like Goldsmith did in 1984 when Vanity Fair wanted an image of Prince created by Warhol to illustrate an article about Prince. As noted by the Court of Appeals, Goldsmith introduced “uncontroverted” evidence “that photographers generally license others to create stylized derivatives of their work in the vein of the Prince Series.” 11 F. 4th, at 50; see 2 App. 291–299. In fact, Warhol himself paid to license photographs for some of his artistic renditions. Such licenses, for photographs or derivatives of them, are how photographers like Goldsmith make a living. They provide an economic incentive to create original works, which is the goal of copyright.
In 2016, AWF licensed an image of Orange Prince to Condé Nast to appear on the cover of a commemorative edition magazine about Prince. The edition, titled “The Genius of Prince,” celebrates the life and work of “Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958–2016.” It is undisputed here that the edition is “devoted to Prince.” 2 App. 352. In addition to AWF’s image on the cover, the magazine contains numerous concert and studio photographs of Prince. In that context, the purpose of the image is substantially the same as that of Goldsmith’s photograph. Both are portraits of Prince used
tence, post, at 1 (“Today, the Court declares that Andy Warhol’s eye-popping silkscreen of Prince … is (in copyright lingo) not ‘transformative’ ”), to its very last, post, at 36 (“[The majority opinion] will make our world poorer”).
