Rock Hall ‘fair use’ ruling raises big questions for creators; Cleveland.com, November 21, 2025

Peter Chakerian, Cleveland.com; Rock Hall ‘fair use’ ruling raises big questions for creators

"Seeing things from both sides

“It can be a slippery-sloped and indeed it was a slippery slope,” said attorney Mark Avsec, partner and vice chair of the Intellectual Property Group of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.

Avsec was part of the funk-rock band Wild Cherry (“Play That Funky Music”) and was an original member of Donnie Iris & the Cruisers. The keyboardist-songwriter wrote or co-wrote all the latter band’s music, was its sole lyricist and produced all of its albums.

“[C]ases started evolving to where any derivative work based on a copyrighted work was almost by definition transformative and therefore a fair use,” he said. 

“That can’t be right. A copyright owner’s ability to authorize or not authorize derivative works based on the copyrighted work is an important right under the Copyright Act.”

Avsec said that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the recent Warhol case reset things."

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Aims to Axe Copyright Lawsuit Over Van Halen Guitar Photo; Billboard, January 22, 2025

BILL DONAHUE , Billboard; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Aims to Axe Copyright Lawsuit Over Van Halen Guitar Photo

"The Rock Hall is just the latest company to face such a lawsuit from Zlozower, who also snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen over a decades-long career. Since 2016, court records show he’s filed nearly 60 copyright cases against a range of defendants over images of Elvis Costello, Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe and more...

In their motion to dismiss the case, the Rock Hall’s attorneys say the museum made a “transformative use” of Zlozower’s original image — a key question when courts decide fair use. They say the Hall used it not simply as an image of the band, but “to contextualize Eddie Van Halen’s instruments on display in the museum as historical artifacts.”

“RRHOF incorporated a portion of plaintiff’s photograph displayed next to the exhibition object, as one piece of source material to document and represent the use of the guitar,” the museum’s lawyers write. “This proximal association between source material and exhibition object helps visitors connect information and delve more deeply into the exhibition objects.”

In making that argument, the Hall’s attorneys had a handy piece of legal precedent to cite: A 2021 ruling by a federal appeals court tossed out a copyright lawsuit against New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over the use of another image of Van Halen in a different exhibit on the same famous set of guitars."