Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
309 U.S. 390 · 1940
Citation profile
266 federal appellate · 48 district · 35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 604 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. (1946), Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises (1985)
266 federal appellate · 48 district · 35 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedSheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp. (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Elizabeth v. Pavement Co. · Tilghman v. Proctor · Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company v. Wolf Brothers & Company · Root v. Railway Co.
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 604 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he purpose is thus to provide just compensation for the wrong, not to impose a penalty by giving to the copyright proprietor profits which are not attributable to the infringement.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'The infringer is liable for actual, not for possible gains. The profits, therefore, which he must account for, are not those which he might reasonably have made, but those which he did make, by use of the plaintiff's invention.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the evidence is sufficient to provide a fair basis of division so as to give the copyright proprietor all the profits that can be deemed to have resulted from the use of what belonged to him.”
2 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.