Richard Prince to Pay Photographers Who Sued Over Copyright; The New York Times, January 26, 2024

 Matt Stevens, The New York Times; Richard Prince to Pay Photographers Who Sued Over Copyright

"The artist Richard Prince agreed to pay at least $650,000 to two photographers whose images he had incorporated in his own work, ending a long-running copyright dispute that had been closely monitored by the art world...

Brian Sexton, a lawyer for Prince, said the artist wanted to protect free expression and have copyright law catch up to changing technology...

Marriott said the judgments showed that copyright law still provided meaningful protection to creators and that the internet was not a copying free-for-all.

“There is not a fair use exception to copyright law that applies to the famous and another that applies to everyone else,” he said."

After the Warhol Decision, Another Major Copyright Case Looms; The New York Times, May 22, 2023

Matt Stevens, The New York Times; After the Warhol Decision, Another Major Copyright Case Looms

"Many thought the latest Supreme Court decision might more clearly delineate what qualifies a work as transformative. But the justices chose instead to focus on how the Warhol portrait had been used, namely to illustrate an article about the musician. The court found that such a use was not distinct enough from the “purpose and character” of Goldsmith’s photo, which had been licensed to Vanity Fair years earlier to help illustrate an article about Prince.

“It was the licensing use, not the creative use, that was at issue,” said Michael W. Carroll, a professor at American University Washington College of Law."

Photographers Score Early Victories in Copyright Lawsuits Against Artist Richard Prince; PetaPixel, May 16, 2023

 PESALA BANDARA, PetaPixel; Photographers Score Early Victories in Copyright Lawsuits Against Artist Richard Prince

"Two professional photographers have scored early victories in a pair of long-running copyright lawsuits against artist Richard Prince for his controversial Instagram-sourced New Portraits series."

Copyright Case Over Richard Prince Instagram Show to Go Forward; New York Times, July 20, 2017

Andrew R. Chow, New York Times; Copyright Case Over Richard Prince Instagram Show to Go Forward

"Richard Prince, who has pushed the legal limits of artistic appropriation for decades, will continue to fight for his art in court. This week, a federal judge in New York refused to throw out a photographer’s lawsuit against Mr. Prince over Mr. Prince’s use of an image in an exhibition. The case will continue, and could set a precedent for how the fair-use doctrine relates to Instagram, the photo-sharing app."

Photo Copyright: Oscar Wilde, Richard Prince, and Your Instagram Content; Huffington Post, 3/15/16

Kim Farbota, Huffington Post; Photo Copyright: Oscar Wilde, Richard Prince, and Your Instagram Content:

"Richard Prince, an "appropriation artist" well-known in creative spheres, is showing blown-up screen shots from his Instagram feed in renowned Manhattan galleries. The contemporary counterparts of Wilde's Gilded Age fan base buy the inkjet-on-canvas prints for upwards of $100,000. The original snappers hear through the proverbial grapevine that their filtered selfies are featured in high-end art shows.

Copyright law has evolved markedly in the century separating Richard Prince from Napoleon Sarony. On the shoulders of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, Prince has made a decades-long career selling slightly altered versions of other people's images. He evades copyright infringement liability through legal principles that allow certain "transformative works" to make use of copyright-protected materials without the owner's consent. Broadly, a transformative "fair use" alters or recontextualizes the original work for the purpose of commentary, criticism, or parody. All of the pieces in the Instagram-based New Portraits series include Prince's own original "comment" within the captured frame, submitted via his Instagram handle, "richardprince1234". He also enlarges the images and moves them from digital to print media. The original photos, which cover most of the space on the printed canvases, remain otherwise untouched.

Donald Graham, a career photographer whose portrait of a Rastafarian man was involuntarily featured in New Portraits, is not impressed. In a complaint filed in federal court this January, Graham calls Prince's work a "blatant disregard of copyright law". Graham's suit challenges whether Prince's transformations are sufficient to trigger "fair use" protection...

At the intersection of copyright and social media, balancing the benefits of exposure with the risks of theft and appropriation is an evolving challenge."

A New Copyright Complaint Against Richard Prince; New York Times, 2/16/15

Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times; A New Copyright Complaint Against Richard Prince:

"A lawyer for the photographer Donald Graham has sent cease-and-desist letters to the artist Richard Prince and the Gagosian Gallery, requesting that they stop displaying or disseminating any artworks or other materials that include Mr. Graham’s images.

The complaint, which was first reported by the website Hyperallergic, stems from a work shown last fall at Gagosian in the exhibit “New Portraits,” which featured ink jet prints of images Mr. Prince had taken from Instagram. The work shows Mr. Graham’s photograph “Rastafarian Smoking a Joint, Jamaica” as it appeared on the Instagram feed of a third party, with the comment “Canal Zinian da lam jam” added by Mr. Prince."

Photographers Band Together to Protect Work in ‘Fair Use’ Cases; New York Times, 2/21/14

Patricia Cohen, New York Times; Photographers Band Together to Protect Work in ‘Fair Use’ Cases:

"To many photographers, a federal appeals court ruling last spring that permitted Richard Prince to use someone else’s photographs in his art was akin to slapping a “Steal This” label on their work.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reasoned that as long as Mr. Prince’s work transformed the images into original art, he was not violating anyone’s copyright.

But photographers are pushing back against that interpretation. Several membership and trade organizations have banded together recently to press their cause in Congress and the courts.

More than half a dozen groups, including the National Press Photographers Association, Professional Photographers of America and the Picture Archive Council of America, have joined together to submit a friend of the court brief to support the photographer Patrick Cariou, after part of his case against Mr. Prince was sent back to a judge for reconsideration."

Court Allows Richard Prince to Appeal Copyright Decision; New York Times, 9/15/11

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Court Allows Richard Prince to Appeal Copyright Decision:

"In a closely watched visual-arts copyright case, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday to permit an appeal by the artist Richard Prince, who was found in March by a lower court to have unlawfully used images by a French photographer to create a series of collages and paintings."