CONTENT MATTERS: The much watched Supreme Court copyright case between established photographer Lynn Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation has swung in her favor.

Thursday’s decision was hashed out over the image that Goldsmith took of the late musician Prince that was used for the premise of a silkscreen series by the Pop artist Andy Warhol.

With a vote of 7-2, the court determined that Warhol’s images couldn’t fall under “fair use” in copyright law. Many creatives in numerous fields were keeping a detailed eye on the proceedings. The choice may very well be seen as a deterrent to artists who conjure up work based on existing material. It is taken into account a win for individuals who own copyrighted content that other works are based upon.

Penning the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Warhol works didn’t have a substantially different industrial purpose from that of the unique photo taken by Goldsmith and utilized by two magazines.

The SCOTUS decision flushed out the premise of the legal battle. In 2016, petitioner Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., or (AWF, licensed to Condé Nast for $10,000 a picture of “Orange Prince” — an orange silkscreen portrait of the musician Prince created by pop artist Andy Warhol — to look on the duvet of a magazine commemorating Prince.

Orange Prince is one in all 16 works now often called the “Prince Series” that Warhol derived from a copyrighted photograph taken in 1981 by Goldsmith, who had been commissioned by Newsweek in 1981 to photograph the then up-and-coming musician named Prince Rogers Nelson for an article. Years later, Goldsmith granted a limited license to Vanity Fair to be used of one in all her Prince photos as an “artist reference for an illustration.” The terms of the license included that the use can be for “one time” only. Vanity Fair hired Warhol to create the illustration, and Warhol used Goldsmith’s photo to create a purple silkscreen portrait of Prince, which appeared with an article about Prince in Vanity Fair’s November 1984 issue. The magazine credited Goldsmith for the “source photograph” and paid her $400.

After Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair’s parent company Condé Nast asked AWF about reusing the 1984 Vanity Fair image for a special-edition magazine that might commemorate Prince. When Condé Nast learned concerning the other Prince Series images, it opted as an alternative to buy a license from AWF to publish Orange Prince. Goldsmith didn’t know concerning the Prince Series until 2016, when she saw Orange Prince on the duvet of Condé Nast’s magazine. Goldsmith notified AWF of her belief that it had infringed her copyright. AWF then sued Goldsmith for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement.

En path to an event Thursday night, Goldsmith deferred comment until Friday. She said she had issued this statement earlier Thursday that highlighted how she financially risked all the pieces and what the ruling means for other artists.

“I’m thrilled by today’s decision and thankful to the Supreme Court for hearing our side of the story. That is an excellent day for photographers and other artists who make a living by licensing their art. This legal battle has been an extended road at great emotional and financial impact upon me and my family. I felt I needed to risk all the pieces we had financially to be able to fight within the courts for defense of my rights and people of all in the humanities against those that would infringe.’

Her hope is that this SCOTUS ruling “is a lesson that folks mustn’t draw back from legally standing up for his or her rights when organizations, foundations or individuals who’ve greater financial resources which they will use to intimidate with legal costs,” The statement read. “It is straightforward to overwhelm individual creators who just need to make their work and never undergo the emotional and expensive legal battle to rise up for his or her rights. I would like to thank the team at Williams & Connolly, especially Lisa Blatt and Tom Hentoff, for sticking with me through the lows and highs, which resulted in a win for a copy-written artist’s work.”

Her achievements include creating the “bio-disk” for Electra Records in 1969, winning a Clio for one in all the radio spots she produced, working on the primary movies of recording artists that were for use for promotion, and being the youngest woman member ever to be accepted into the Director’s Guild of America. Her photography may be present in museum collections on the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, amongst others.