Law & Crime report..
In a decision sure to shake up the art world and intellectual property law, the Second Circuit ruled on Friday that Andy Warhol’s series of silkscreens and pencil illustrations based on a Vanity Fair-commissioned photograph of the musical icon Prince does not clearly qualify as fair use.
The decision gives photographer Lynn Goldsmith another opportunity to sue the Andy Warhol Foundation for allegedly infringing upon an image taken at her studio in 1981.
When Vanity Fair commissioned Goldsmith’s photograph for an article on Prince, the magazine did not inform her that Warhol would be separately commissioned to turn that image into a silkscreen to signal the musician’s iconic Pop status. Goldsmith also did not know that the Pop artist extraordinaire would make 15 works based on that image that would become known as his “Prince Series.” She says that she learned of the series after Prince’s death in 2016.
