String Of Puppies Essay

Art Rogers, well-known professional photographer, created a black and white photo image of a man and a woman holding a litter of puppies. He later licensed the photo and named it “Puppies”. Rogers made a living off his photography so he sold many prints of “Puppies”. The photo was also sold to a private collector, and put on display in many galleries. Jeff Koons, sculpture artist, found a photo card of “Puppies” and continued to create a sculpture almost identical to the photo. Two of the three sculptures sold for $367,000. According to the four factor of measuring fair use Koons creation, “String of Puppies”, is in violation of the fair use copyright. The first factor that is used when determining fair use is the transformative factor. It takes into account the purpose and character of the use. This means if the work was transformed by adding new meaning, information, insights, and/or understandings it is more likely to pass as fair use. The only changes that Koons made in “String of Puppies” were increasing the size of the puppies noses, giving them blue fur, and giving the man and woman flowers in their hair. Furthermore, “String of Puppies” was not used for any scholarship, research, or education purposes. Those changes did not add a new meaning or expression to the work. The characters in “String of Puppies” were simply modeled after those in

This factor takes into account any income or potential market deprived from the copyright owner. Since it is already known that “String of Puppies” was not used for research or educational purposes it makes it clear that the purpose of the work was to sell for a profit. Two of the Three sculptures made were sold for $367,000. This means that even though Koons work was in a different medium and not directly competing with “Puppies” it still deprived Rogers of income. It also destroyed his potential to offer his work in different