Document Type
Student Article
Abstract
Copyright law is intended to increase public access to creative works, and in service of this goal it grants exclusive rights to copyright holders to provide them with the economic incentive to create new works. However, the reality is that creative works are often not only influenced by their predecessors, but often are accretions of previous concepts, stylistic approaches, and ideas that add a creator’s imprimatur and thus create a new work that is tethered to its derivatives in ways that range from tenuous to seemingly duplicative. It is within this zone of ambiguous connection that the doctrine of fair use operates as it provides creators a method by which to incorporate copyrighted works into their new creation, the use of which would be otherwise prohibited by copyright law. Recently, the Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith disrupted the analytical framework that courts use to analyze fair use defense claims. This departure from precedent threatens to obfuscate and confuse lower courts and has the potential to diminish the impact of copyright law’s goal of providing the public broader access to creative works. This Note argues that, in light of the shift made by the Court in Goldsmith, the need for the protection of new works by seminal artists requires a new test that would give “Transformative Artists” the space to experiment and create new works of art that would undoubtedly serve the stated aims of copyright law.
DOI
10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.3
First Page
309
Last Page
330
Recommended Citation
Roberto C. Candelas,
Transformative Artists: Rebalancing the Fair Use Doctrine,
11
Tex. A&M J. Prop. L.
309
(2025).
Available at:
https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.3
