[rcxdude]

The basic idea is whether an unauthorised derivative work is itself entitled to copyright protection: could the creator of the derivative work prevent copying by the original creator (or anyone else) of the work on which it is based, even though they themselves have no permission to distribute it? (if the work is authorised, this is generally considered to be the case). It looks like from this the conclusion is 'no', at the very least in this case. I'm not sure this matches most people's moral intuitions: every now and again a big company includes some fan art in their own official release without permission (usually not as a result of a general policy, but because of someone getting lazy and the rest of the system failing to catch it), and generally speaking the reaction is negative.

[joshuaissac]

> whether an unauthorised derivative work is itself entitled to copyright protection

That is not what this court case was about. Genius had already settled the case of unauthorised transcriptions and had bought licences for its lyrics after a lawsuit 2014, so its own work was no longer unauthorised. In the case cited above, Genius was trying to enforce its claims against Google via contract law rather than copyright law. The court ruled that the alleged violations were covered by copyright law, so they could only pursued via copyright law, and that only the copyright holder (or assignee) of the lyrics that were copied could sue Google under it.