Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 48

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

3 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

. . . ,  scholarship,  or  research.”    §107  (emphasis  added). 
Once more, the statute indicates that a court must examine 
the purpose of the particular use under challenge, not the
artistic  purpose  underlying  a  work.    And  once  more,  the 
statute  tasks  courts  with  asking  whether  the  challenged
use  serves  a  different  purpose  (as,  say,  a  “criticism”  of  or
“comment” on the original) or whether it seeks to serve the
same purpose (as a substitute for the original). 

Second, the copyright statute expressly protects a copy-
right  holder’s  exclusive  right  to  create  “derivative  works”
that  “transfor[m]”  or  “adap[t]”  his  original  work.    §§101,
106(2).  So saying that a later user of a copyrighted work 
“transformed” its message and endowed it with a “new aes-
thetic” cannot automatically mean he has made fair use of 
it.  Contra, post, at 1–2, 22–23, 34–36 (KAGAN, J., dissent-
ing).  To hold otherwise would risk making a nonsense of 
the statutory scheme—suggesting that transformative uses 
of originals belong to the copyright holder (under §106) but 
that others may simultaneously claim those transformative
uses  for  themselves  (under  §107).    We  aren’t  normally  in
the business of putting a statute “at war with itself ” in this 
way.  United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S. 106, 
180 (1911).

Finally,  the  fourth  fair-use  factor  requires  courts  to  as-
sess “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or
value  of  the  copyrighted  work.”  §107(4).  This  Court  has 
described  the  fourth  factor  as  the  “most  important”  one. 
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 
U. S. 539, 566 (1985).  This Court has said, too, that no fac-
tor may “be treated in isolation, one from another.”  Camp-
bell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569, 578 (1994).  Nor 
does anything in the fourth factor call on courts to speculate
about artistic ambitions or aesthetics.  Instead, it requires
courts to ask whether consumers treat a challenged use “as 
a market replacement” for a copyrighted work or a market
complement that does not impair demand for the original.