Opinion ID: 218859
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Impact on the market for the original

Text: The District Court‟s finding that the fourth factor—the impact on the market for the original—also favors the Station Defendants was also erroneous. The District Court held that Murphy had not established that he had experienced any market harm simply by asserting that he would have been willing to license the Image if WKXW had approached him. It is true that a copyright owner cannot claim market harm simply because he would have liked to charge for the use in question. If that were the case, then it would be difficult indeed for any fair use defense to succeed. 24 “The fourth fair use factor . . . requires courts to consider not only the extent of market harm caused by the particular actions of the alleged infringer, but also whether unrestricted and widespread conduct of the sort engaged in by the defendant . . . would result in a substantially adverse impact on the potential market for the original.” Campbell, 510 U.S. at 590 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). When a copyright owner “clearly does have an interest in exploiting a licensing market—and especially where the copyright holder has actually succeeded in doing so—„it is appropriate that potential licensing revenues . . . be considered in a fair use analysis.‟” Princeton Univ. Press v. Mich. Document Servs., 99 F.3d 1381, 1387 (6th Cir. 1996) (quoting Am. Geophysical Union v. Texaco Inc., 60 F.3d 913, 930 (2d Cir. 1994)). In determining whether such a licensing market exists, we look to “the impact on potential licensing revenues for traditional, reasonable, or likely to be developed markets.” Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 448 F.3d 605, 614 (2d Cir. 2006). Murphy is a professional photographer who engages in licensing of his work. If it were possible to reproduce his unaltered work, as a whole, without compensation under the guise of news reportage—a “traditional, reasonable, or likely to be developed market[]” for professional photographers—it would surely have a “substantially adverse impact” on his ability to license his photographs. As the Supreme Court has noted, “when a commercial use amounts to mere duplication of the entirety of an original, it clearly supersedes [the original] . . . and serves as a market replacement for it, making it likely that cognizable market harm to the original will occur.” Id. at 591 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Such is the case here. 25 Finally, the Station Defendants suggest that there is no market for the Image because Carton and Rossi no longer work as a team and because the importance of the NJM award was fleeting in any event. However, they cite no precedent for the proposition that a copyright owner must prove substantial demand for the work in question in order to establish infringement.16 Clearly, at the time the Image was posted on the WKXW website, there was at least one party who thought the use of the Image had some value—the Millennium Radio Group. That there may not have been much other demand for it hardly means that the Station Defendants were entitled to use it for free. Further, without discovery into the relevant markets, such statements are pure speculation on the part of the Station Defendants.17