Law Commons^™

Visual Appropriation Art, Transformativeness, And Fungibility, Jasmine C. Abdel-Khalik

Faculty Works

As an intentionally flexible doctrine, fair use in copyright has a long history of ambiguity and criticism. While courts have developed various standards and considerations to give fair use some shape, key decisions have generally done so in the context of textual material. Likewise, the examples in Judge Leval’s seminal work on fair use involve textual material. His argument to assess the first fair use factor based on transformativeness has won the day. But in contrast to the textual examples, interpreting the meaning and transformation of visual works is rife with danger.

Recent appropriation art cases exemplify this danger and …