Law Commons^™

"If That's The Way It Must Be, Okay": Campbell V. Acuff-Rose On Rewind

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

The 1994 Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose established broad protections for parody in U.S. copyright law. While the case is well known, the facts behind the case are not. None of the three courts that heard the case were told that the alleged parody by 2 Live Crew appeared only on a “sanitized” version of the group’s controversial album. Thus the work had a heightened commercial purpose: filling up a meager album so that album could serve as a market stopgap for its controversial cousin. Although commercial purpose is a key factor in the fair use calculus, no court …