This is another court case focusing on parodies as they fit under fair use.  Air Pirates was sued by Walt Disney Productions for creating "a rather bawdy depiction of the Disney characters as active members of a free thinking, promiscuous, drug ingesting counterculture."  Walt Disney Productions won.  One of the points that added heavily to the decision was that “the defendants here could have expressed their theme without copying Disney's protected expression.”  The importance of this point is further discussed in the following paragraph.

The aspect of this case that is most important to focus on is the actual subject of the parody.  In other words, this case highlighted the importance of clarifying whether or not the newly created work actually parodied the original, or used the original to parody something else.  This could be used to argue that my work is a parody that fits under fair use definition.  Since the lyrics to Hotel California are used in my play Hotel Bermuda to create a parody of the song Hotel California rather than just to use the song as a medium for creating something funny parodying something else, it would be considered a ‘fair use’ parody.