National Basketball Ass'n v. Motorola, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
105 F.3d 841 · 1997
Citation profile
33 federal appellate · 23 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 177 later decisions — most recently August 2025 · most notably Briarpatch Limited Lp v. Phoenix Pictures Inc (2004), United Industries Corp. v. Clorox Co. (1998)
33 federal appellate · 23 district · 7 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Carnegie v. United States · Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. · Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises · International News Service v. Associated Press
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 177 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services ... uses in commerce any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which ... (B) in commercial advertising or promotion, misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities, or geographic origin of his or her or another person’s goods, services, or commercial activities, shall be liable in a civil action by any person who believes that he or she is or is likely to be damaged by such act.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(i) a plaintiff generates or gathers information at a cost; (ii) the information is time-sensitive; (iii) a defendant’s use of the information constitutes free riding on the plaintiffs efforts; (iv) the defendant is in direct competition with a product or service offered by the plaintiffs; and (v) the ability of other parties to free-ride on the efforts of the plaintiff or others would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] plaintiff may establish this materiality requirement by proving that the defendants misrepresented an inherent quality or characteristic of the product.'”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.