F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
279 federal appellate · 104 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 800 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Mazer v. Stein (1954), Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc. (1998)
279 federal appellate · 104 district · 8 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedF. W. Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, Inc. (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 17 U.S.C. § 101 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976)
Relies on Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp. · L. A. Westermann Co. v. Dispatch Printing Co. · Consolidated Gas Electric Light & Power Co. v. Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. · Douglas v. Cunningham
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 800 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] rule of liability which merely takes away the profits from an infringement would offer little discouragement to infringers. It would fall short of an effective sanction for enforcement of the copyright policy. The statutory rule, formulated after long experience, not merely compels restitution of profit and reparation for injury but also is designed to discourage wrongful conduct. The discretion of the court is wide enough to permit a resort to statutory damages for such purposes. Even for uninjurious and unprofitable invasions of copyright the court may, if it deems it just, impose a liability within statutory limits to sanction and vindicate the statutory policy.”
50 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“all the profits which the infringer shall have made from such infringement, and in proving profits the plaintiff shall be required to prove sales only, and the defendant shall be required to prove every element of cost which he claims ....”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“what is just in the particular case, considering the nature of the copyright, the circumstances of the infringement and the like, ... but with the express qualification that in every case the assessment must be within the prescribed [maximum or minimum]. Within these limitations the court's discretion and sense of justice are controlling....”
8 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.