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Lawrence Marano v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, No. 20-3104 · judgment April 2, 2021

Certiorari denied · October 4, 2021

Pre-decision estimate: 2% cert probability

Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.

Questions presented

Whether The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s commercial use of a photograph on its Website to sell tickets to its museum exhibition, as well as in the “brick-andmortar” exhibition itself, was sufficiently transformative to warrant a finding in favor of fair use on the first statutory factor, 17 U.S.C §107(1).
Whether Petitioner stated a plausible claim that The Met’s use of his photograph was for commercial purposes.
Whether The Met’s use of the photograph across multiple media platforms without any attribution or credit to the Petitionerphotographer constituted bad faith so as to weigh against a finding fair use.
Whether The Met’s use of the photograph usurped the actual or potential licensing market.
Whether the Court of Appeals properly analyzed the remaining statutory factors in light of its finding of transformative use.

For petitioner
James Harris Freeman
Liebowitz Law Firm, PLLC

For respondent
Linda J Steinman
Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Oct 04 2021
Petition DENIED.
Aug 11 2021
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/27/2021.
Aug 04 2021
Waiver of right of respondent The Metropolitan Museum of Art to respond filed.
Main Document
Jul 01 2021
Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due August 5, 2021)
Petition