Going “Beyond” Mere Transformation: Warhol and Reconciliation of the Derivative Work Right and Fair Use

Abstract

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith is a watershed moment in the story of copyright jurisprudence. At its broadest, the decision articulates a unified vision—one that had been dormant in the lower court fair use jurisprudence—about the role of copyright and the manner in which to make sense of its effort to balance exclusivity with its myriad limitations. This Essay focuses on how the Court reconciled the working of the statute’s derivative work right with the breadth and reach of the “transformative use” version of the fair use doctrine. The core of the Court’s reconciliation centers around three ideas. The first is the need for an independent justification for a use to even qualify for fair use. Transformation on its own does not provide such a justification, which must be instead identified independently. Related is the second idea, that the secondary use must reveal a distinct purpose. Unlike the justification element, this step is comparative and heavily contextual. And the third element is the balance between transformativeness and commerciality, which the legislative text makes clear and Campbell had gone to extreme lengths to reinforce.