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30  ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. 

v. GOLDSMITH 
Opinion of the Court 

The dissent commits the same interpretive error as AWF:
It focuses on Campbell’s paraphrase, yet ignores the rest of
that decision’s careful reasoning.  Indeed, upon reading the 
dissent, someone might be surprised to learn that Campbell 
was about parody at all.  Had expert testimony confirmed
the obvious fact that 2 Live Crew’s “Pretty Woman” differed
in  aesthetics  and  meaning  from  Orbison’s  original,  that
would have been the end of the dissent’s analysis.  See post, 
at 14–17 (opinion of KAGAN, J.).  Not the Court’s, however. 
Campbell  was  the  culmination  of  a  long  line  of  cases  and 
scholarship about parody’s claim to fairness in borrowing.
“For purposes of copyright law,” the Court explained, “the 
heart of any parodist’s claim to quote from existing material 
is the use of some elements of a prior author’s composition 
to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that
author’s works.”  510 U. S., at 580.  Campbell thus drew a 
nuanced distinction between parody and satire: While par-
ody cannot function unless it conjures up the original, “sat-
ire can stand on its own two feet and so requires justifica-
tion  for  . . .  borrowing.”  Id.,  at  580–581.    The  objective 
meaning or message of 2 Live Crew’s song was relevant to
this inquiry into the reasons for copying, but any “new ex-
pression, meaning, or message” was not the test.18 

What role meaning or message played in the Court of Ap-
peals’ analysis here is not entirely clear.  The court correctly 

—————— 

18 The dissent makes a similar mistake with Google: It fails to read the 
decision as a whole.  So while the dissent claims that the “[Google] Court 
would have told this one to go back to school,” it might be easier just to 
go back and read Google.  Post, at 2 (opinion of KAGAN, J.).  The Court 
did not hold that any secondary use that is innovative, in some sense, or
that a judge or Justice considers to be creative progress consistent with
the constitutional objective of copyright, is thereby transformative.  The 
Court instead emphasized that Google used Sun’s code in a “distinct and 
different” context, and “only insofar as needed” or “necessary” to achieve 
Google’s new purpose.  Google, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 26); see also 
n. 8, supra.  In other words, the same concepts of use and justification 
that the Court relied on in Google are the ones that it applies today.