Two trade associations representing the powerful image licensing agencies Corbis and Getty have filed amicus briefs in support of Patrick Cariou, adding fuel to the fire in the ever-more-dramatic copyright infringement lawsuit between the photographer and artist Richard Prince. The news comes after several high-profile parties — including Google, The Warhol Foundation, and the Association of Art Museum Directors — filed their own amicus briefs (also called “friend-of-the-court” briefs) on behalf of Prince. The artist is currently appealing a lower court’s ruling that said he inappropriately borrowed from Cariou’s photos of Jamaican Rastafarians.

The formidable groups now writing on the claimant’s behalf, the Art Newspaper reports, are the Photographers Archive Council of America and the American Society of Media Photographers. They contend that their very livelihoods depend on the US Court of Appeals upholding the original decision. Like Cariou’s own lawyers, the unions rest much of their argument on the lack of interest Prince had in the original meaning of Cariou’s photographs. (In court, TAN reports, he said that he simply wanted to create “balls-out, unbelievably looking great painting.”)

The agencies insist that an ethical imperative rests on the judge’s shoulders as well: if the court were to permit every artist “who decides to use a work but cannot be bothered to ask permission and pay a fee,” then the union photographers will be robbed not only of income but also of the incentive to produce original work. Were the law to allow their labor to go uncredited, they write, “it would effectively kill the golden goose.”

It is not entirely surprising that these groups would come out in support of Cariou. In an earlier article published on ARTINFO this week about the ripple effects of Cariou v. Prince, art lawyer Virginia Rutledge noted that many current copyright infringement claims involve photography and photography agencies. “Often the claims involve photography — not surprising since so many images are photo-based,” she said. “It may be that these photographic image-makers have more familiarity with licensing practices, but the attempt to import those expectations — or those hopes — into art-making is problematic on a number of levels.”

–Reid Singer