50 most influential people in IP 2022: MIP recognises Lynn Goldsmith, celebrity photographer

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50 most influential people in IP 2022: MIP recognises Lynn Goldsmith, celebrity photographer

Lynn Goldsmith is a celebrity photographer in the US

Lynn Goldsmith.jpg
Lynn Goldsmith, celebrity photographer, US

When is a work sufficiently transformative to be covered by fair use?

That question is set to be answered for the whole US in the near future thanks to photographer Lynn Goldsmith and her accusation of infringement against the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Goldsmith approached the foundation in 2016, shortly after Condé Nast published a commemorative magazine for the late music star Prince.

The photographer had licensed an image of Prince to Vanity Fair, owned by Condé Nast, in 1984 to be used by Warhol as an artistic reference. But between 1984 and 1987, Warhol made 16 variants of the photo, known as the Prince Series.

The commemorative magazine featured one of these variants on its cover.

Goldsmith said she’d been unaware of these variants until 2016 and that they were copyright violations of her photograph. She stated her intent to seek legal action.

But the Andy Warhol Foundation beat her to the punch, filing for a preliminary ruling at the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The court ruled in 2019 that Warhol’s images were sufficiently transformative to be covered by the doctrine of transformative use.

Transformative use means that a new work has significantly changed the appearance or nature of a copyrighted work. If the use is found to be transformative, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a fair use defence will succeed, but said finding will weigh heavily in favour of the defendant.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit disagreed with the lower forum, ruling in 2021 that the series wasn’t covered by fair use.

The Andy Warhol Foundation appealed the case to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), which picked up the matter last April.

Andy Warhol Foundation v Goldsmith will soon become the second fair use case that the high court has considered in just two years, the last being Google v Oracle.

Before the Google decision last year, SCOTUS hadn’t ruled on a fair use matter since Campbell v Acuff-Rose Music in 1994.

Counsel suspected that the case between the foundation and Goldsmith would be the “biggest copyright matter in decades”.

Profiles for the 50 most influential people in IP 2022
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The list is in five categories, which you can navigate by selecting the appropriate section below.

19 Industry leaders
10 Public officials
9 IP authorities
7 Judges
5 Notable individuals
 
Kasim Alfalahi is CEO at Avanci in the US
Shannon Thyme Klinger is chief legal officer at Moderna in the US
Jim Sullivan is a director at Shazam Productions in the UK
Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen are founders at Andreessen Horowitz in the US
Audrey Lee is general counsel at Starz Entertainment in the US
Beat Weibel is chief IP counsel at Siemens in Germany
Jack Randles is head of legal at Manolo Blahnik in the UK
Mattia Fogliacco is president of Sisvel International in Luxembourg
Joyce Ang is senior vice president for IPR protection at Lazada in Singapore
Daniel Zohny is head of IP at FIFA in Switzerland
René Claude Metomo is the president of the Association of Penja Pepper Producers in Cameroon
Niall Trainor is senior director of brand protection at eOne in the UK
Stephen Wurth and John Scott are legal counsel at Qualcomm in the US
Scott Frank is CEO of IP at AT&T in the US
Nader Pazirandeh is president at Unicolors in the US
Juliette Rouilloux-Sicre is vice president of legal and intellectual property at Thales in France
Clemens Heusch is global head of dispute resolution at Nokia in Germany
Craig Wright is a computer scientist in Australia
Robert Devonshire is a partner at MML Capital in the UK
 
The investigation lead at the Spanish National Police asked to remain anonymous
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the director general of the World Trade Organization in Switzerland
Jacob Rees-Mogg is the former secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy in the UK
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the former president of the United Arab Emirates
Edwin Tong is the second minister for law in the Singapore government
Kerstin Jorna is director general of DG Grow at the European Commission in Belgium
Patrick Leahy is a senator for Vermont at the US Congress
Thom Tillis is a senator for North Carolina at the US Congress
Vladimir Putin is president of Russia
 
Alexander Ramsay is former chair of the UPC Administrative Committee in Sweden
Insil Lee is the commissioner at KIPO in South Korea
Christian Archambeau is executive director at the EUIPO in Spain
Tim Moss is former CEO of the UKIPO
Kathi Vidal is the director of the USPTO and under secretary of commerce for IP in the US government
Shira Perlmutter is register of copyrights at the US Copyright Office
Shen Changyu is the commissioner of the CNIPA in China
António Campinos is president of the EPO in Germany
Konstantinos Georgaras is CEO of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office
 
Wang Jiangqiao is a judge at the Hangzhou Internet Court in China
Prathiba Singh is a judge at the Delhi High Court in India
Klaus Grabinski is president of the UPC Court of Appeal in Germany
Colm Connolly is the chief judge at the District Court for the District of Delaware in the US
Suzanne Barnett was the interim chief judge at the Copyright Royalty Board in the US
Len Stark is a judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the US
Orlando Garcia is the chief judge at the District Court for the Western District of Texas in the US
 
Amber Kotrri is the founder of House of Zana in the UK
Taras Kulbaba is a partner at Bukovnik & Kulbaba IP Guardians in Belgium
Ankit Sahni is the owner of the RAGHAV Artificial Intelligence Painting App in India
Ed Sheeran is a pop star in the UK
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