Raanan Katz v. Irina Chevaldina, 802 F.3d 1178

Raanan Katz owned the copyright to a candid photograph (the Photo) showing an unflattering expression; photographer Seffi Magriso assigned the Photo to Katz in 2012.
Irina Chevaldina, a disgruntled former tenant, found the Photo online and published it in 25 blog posts from 2011–2012 to criticize Katz and his businesses.
Chevaldina used the Photo unaltered, with captions, and cropped into mocking cartoons; she made no profit from the blog and never published a book.
Katz sued Chevaldina for direct copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 501 seeking to prevent dissemination of the Photo.
The district court granted summary judgment for Chevaldina, finding each use was fair use; Katz appealed.
The Eleventh Circuit reviewed de novo and affirmed, applying the four statutory fair use factors to each blog post and concluding fair use as a matter of law.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Chevaldina’s reproductions of the Photo in blog posts were fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107	Katz argued the reproductions infringed his copyright and that the district court erred by not performing a separate work-by-work analysis for each post	Chevaldina argued her uses were noncommercial criticism/commentary and transformative, with no market harm	The court held the uses were fair use as a matter of law and affirmed summary judgment for Chevaldina

Beal v. Paramount Pictures Corp., 20 F.3d 454 (11th Cir. 1994) (summary judgment standard and de novo review applied)
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994) (definition of transformative use and weighing fair use factors)
Peter Letterese & Assocs., Inc. v. World Inst. of Scientology Enters., 533 F.3d 1287 (11th Cir. 2008) (considerations for purpose/character factor)
Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2001) (photography as factual work and transformative criticism)
Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) (publication before defendant’s copying favors fair use)
Núñez v. Caribbean Int’l News Corp., 235 F.3d 18 (1st Cir. 2000) (need to reproduce entire photograph for its meaning can mitigate amount/substantiality factor)
Cambridge Univ. Press v. Patton, 769 F.3d 1232 (11th Cir. 2014) (market effect inquiry in fair use analysis)
Swatch Grp. Mgmt. Servs. Ltd. v. Bloomberg L.P., 756 F.3d 73 (2d Cir. 2014) (attenuated link to commercial gain discounts commercial nature)
Monge v. Maya Magazines, Inc., 688 F.3d 1164 (9th Cir. 2012) (author’s ability to change mind about publishing considered in market-harm analysis)