No. 98-17072’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
8 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably SHL Imaging, Inc. v. Artisan House, Inc. (2000), Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc. (2003)
8 district ·
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 Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. · Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios Inc · United Drug Co. v. Theodore Rectanus Co. · United States v. Wells · Stewart v. Abend
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“While the Ets-Hokin court correctly noted that a derivative work must be based on a “preexisting work,” and that the term “work” refers to a “work of authorship” as set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 102 (a), it failed to appreciate that any derivative work must recast, transform or ad[a]pt the authorship contained in the preexisting work. A photograph of Jeff Koons’ “Puppy” sculpture in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, merely depicts that sculpture; it does not recast, transform, or adapt Koons’ sculptural authorship. In short, the authorship of the photographic work is entirely different and separate from the authorship of the sculpture.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Under the merger doctrine, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the idea underlying the work can be expressed only in one way, lest there be a monopoly on the underlying idea. In such an instance, it is said that the work's idea and expression "merge." Under the related doctrine of scènes à faire, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the expression embodied in the work necessarily flows from a commonplace idea; like merger, the rationale is that there should be no monopoly on the underlying unprotectable idea.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Courts today continue to hold that such decisions by the photographer — or, more precisely, the elements of photographs that result from these decisions — are worthy of copyright protection. See, e.g., Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301, 307 (2d Cir.1992) ("Elements of originality in a photograph may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved.”) (citations omitted); Eastern America Trio Prods., Inc. v. Tang Elec. Corp., 97 F.Supp.2d 395, 417 (S.D.N.Y.2000).”
1 later decision 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.