Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.
1994 United States Supreme Court case
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994), was a United States Supreme Court copyright law case that established that a commercial parody can qualify as fair use. This case established that the fact that money is made by a work does not make it impossible for fair use to apply; it is merely one of the components of a fair use analysis.
History
The members of the rap music group 2 Live Crew—Luke Skyywalker (Luther Campbell), Fresh Kid Ice, Mr. Mixx and Brother Marquis—composed a song called "Pretty Woman," a parody based on Roy Orbison's rock ballad, "Oh, Pretty Woman." The group's manager asked Acuff-Rose Music if they could get a license to use Orbison's tune for the ballad to be used as a parody. Acuff-Rose Music refused to grant the band a license but 2 Live Crew nonetheless produced and released the parody.
Almost a year later, after nearly a quarter of a million copies of the recording had been sold, Acuff-Rose sued 2 Live Crew and its record company, Luke Skyywalker Records, for copyright infringement. A federal district court in Nashville, Tennessee granted summary judgment for 2 Live Crew, reasoning that the commercial purpose of the parody did not bar it from fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. § 107). The ruling pointed out that 2 Live Crew's parody "quickly degenerates" from the original and only used no more than was necessary of the original to create the parody. For those reasons, the court decided it was "extremely unlikely that 2 Live Crew's song could adversely affect the market for the original." The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded, holding that the commercial nature of the parody rendered it presumptively unfair under the first of four factors relevant under § 107; that, by taking the "heart" of the original and making it the "heart" of a new work, 2 Live Crew had taken too much under the third § 107 factor; and that market harm for purposes of the fourth § 107 factor had been established by a presumption attaching to commercial uses.
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