Second Circuit Restores Traditional Fair Use Tests

Quick reminder: fair use is not an absolute doctrine. Rather, it's a series of tests and criteria applied to a reuse that might be copyright infringing to determine whether infringement applies. Different courts have used different sets of criteria or weighed them differently, and interpretations have shifted over time. For example, recently it has been much harder to get fair use protection for parody and other humorous forms of commentary.

In this case, the question was whether Judge Batts's criteria that a reused work must somehow be "transformative" was an acceptable fair use test. Her ruling was generally acknowledged to be somewhat novel and raised concern particularly in the art world where reuse of images is common. It was particularly troubling as the case at hand concerned work by artist Richard Prince, who created new works of art based on photographs from a book. Prince's works were found infringing at trial level based on this new criteria, but his conviction is now overturned.