The Supreme Court this week joked about their appreciation for Prince and Andy Warhol during a hearing on a photographer's claim that an image of the musician by Warhol violated her copyright.
Bloomberg reports that Justice Clarence Thomas mentioned at one point during arguments that he had been a fan of Prince back in the 1980s, which caused Justice Elena Kagan to jokingly ask, "No longer?"
Thomas said, "only on Thursday nights," and proceeded to ask a hypothetical question about the image being discussed. Thomas asked if he added the words "Go Orange" to the orange-colored image of Prince, in reference to the Syracuse University basketball team, whether that would be considered a copyright violation.
When the attorney representing the Andy Warhol Foundation, Roman Martinez, said that it's unlikely their organization would sue an individual fan over something homemade, Thomas interjected that he's "going to market it to all my Syracuse buddies," prompting more laughter.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor joked, "my colleague Justice Thomas needs a lawyer."
Martinez went on to claim that a federal appeals court that allowed the copyright claim by photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who took the original photo that Warhol altered, discounts the "transformative" nature of what the artist did with the image.
Bloomberg reports that Warhol made the images for a project being conducted by Vanity Fair, which paid a $400 licensing fee to Goldsmith for use of her photo as an "artist's reference" in 1984. The lawsuit emerged after Vanity Fair's parent company, Conde Nast, paid the foundation over $10,000 in 2016 to print another image that Warhol created for the magazine that was never previously released and did not pay Goldsmith or credit her work.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to agree with this argument, saying at one point that when looking at both the photograph and the image side-by-side, "You don't say, Oh, here are two pictures of Prince. You say, That's a picture of Prince, and this is a work of art sending a message about modern society."
The court will likely issue a ruling in the case sometime by late June.
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