Justices Probe Fair Use in Warhol-Prince Copyright Argument (1)

Supreme Court justices drilled down on just how different the purpose of a follow-on work must be to tilt the analysis of an Andy Warhol print of a modified photo of Prince during oral arguments Wednesday in the first fair use case heard in decades.

The justices scrutinized both the Andy Warhol Foundation’s and photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s theories on how fundamentally different the works had to be for the print to qualify as transformative use, and the degree to which use of the particular original photograph was “essential” or “useful.” Hypothetical questions from the bench ranged from adapting a book ...