Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

Prince in magazine stories about Prince, the original photo-
graph and AWF’s copying use of it share substantially the 
same purpose.  Moreover, the copying use is of a commercial 
nature.  Even though Orange Prince adds new expression
to Goldsmith’s photograph, as the District Court found, this 
Court agrees with the Court of Appeals that, in the context
of  the  challenged  use,  the  first  fair  use  factor  still  favors
Goldsmith. 

A 
The  Copyright  Act  encourages  creativity  by  granting  to
the author of an original work “a bundle of exclusive rights.” 
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 
U. S. 539, 546 (1985); see U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 8 (“The 
Congress shall have Power . . . To Promote the Progress of
Science  and  useful  Arts,  by  securing  for  limited  Times  to 
Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respec-
tive Writings and Discoveries”).  That bundle includes the 
rights to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare deriv-
ative works, and, in the case of pictorial or graphic works, 
to display the copyrighted work publicly.  17 U. S. C. §106.
The Act, however, “reflects a balance of competing claims
upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged 
and  rewarded,  but  private  motivation  must  ultimately
serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of lit-
erature, music, and the other arts.”  Twentieth Century Mu-
sic Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U. S. 151, 156 (1975).  Copyright thus
trades  off  the  benefits  of  incentives  to  create  against  the 
costs of restrictions on copying.  The Act, for example, limits 
the  duration  of  copyright,  §§302–305,  as  required  by  the 
Constitution; makes facts and ideas uncopyrightable, §102;
and limits the scope of copyright owners’ exclusive rights,
§§107–122.

This  balancing  act  between  creativity  and  availability 
(including for use in new works) is reflected in one such lim-
itation, the defense of “fair use.”  In 1976, Congress codified