30 Cal. 4th 881 - Winter v. DC Comics’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 3 district · 31 state decisions
Relationships
Applies 17 U.S.C. § 107 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976)
Relies on 22 Cal. 3d 672 - Good Government Group of Seal Beach, Inc. v. Superior Court · 42 Cal. 3d 254 - Baker v. Los Angeles Herald Examiner · 25 Cal. 3d 860 - Guglielmi v. Spelling-Goldberg Productions · Dr Seuss Enterprises Lp v. Penguin Books Usa Inc · 25 Cal. 4th 387 - Comedy III Productions, Inc. v. Gary Saderup, Inc.
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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[although the fictional characters Johnny and Edgar Autumn are less-than-subtle evocations of Johnny and Edgar Winter, the books do not depict plaintiffs literally. Instead, plaintiffs are merely part of the raw materials from which the comic books were synthesized. To the extent the drawings of the Autumn brothers resemble plaintiffs at all, they are distorted for purposes of lampoon, parody, or caricature. And the Autumn brothers are but cartoon characters— half-human and half-worm—in a larger story, which is itself quite expressive.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.