Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 9, 1993 Decided March 7, 1994
Full case name	Luther R. Campbell a.k.a. Luke Skyywalker, et al., Petitioners v. Acuff-Rose Music, Incorporated
Citations	510 U.S. 569 (more) 114 S. Ct. 1164; 127 L. Ed. 2d 500; 1994 U.S. LEXIS 2052
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	754 F. Supp. 1150 (M.D. Tenn.), appeal dismissed, 929 F.2d 700 (6th Cir. 1991) (table) (text at 1991 WL 43927), rev'd, 972 F.2d 1429 (6th Cir. 1992), cert. granted, 507 U.S. 1003 (1993)
Subsequent	25 F.3d 297 (6th Cir. 1994)
Holding
The commercial nature of a parody does not render it a presumptively unfair use of copyrighted material. Rather, a parody's commercial character is only one element that should be weighed in a fair use inquiry.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices Harry Blackmun · John P. Stevens Sandra Day O'Connor · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Case opinions
Majority	Souter, joined by unanimous
Concurrence	Kennedy
Laws applied
Copyright Act of 1976; 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 107 (1988)

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.^[1] 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.^[2]