Gaiman v. McFarlane’s Empirical Analysis
360 F.3d 644 · 2004
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 7 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 85 later decisions — most recently August 2024 · most notably Psihoyos v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2014), Jay E. Hayden Foundation v. First Neighbor Bank, N.A. (2010)
31 federal appellate · 7 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 Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid · Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co. · Stewart v. Abend · Cada v. Baxter Healthcare Corp. · Clackamas Gastroenterology Associates, P. C. v. Wells
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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“are the products not of the creative imagination but of simple observation of the human comedy”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The reason is the difference between literary and graphic expression. The description of a character in prose leaves much to the imagination, even when the description is detailed — as in Dashiell Hammett’s description of Sam Spade’s physical appearance in the first paragraph of The Maltese Falcon. “Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down — from high flat temples — in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.” Even after all this, one hardly knows what Sam Spade looked like. But everyone knows what Humphrey Bogart looked like.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Here is a typical case from academe. One professor has brilliant ideas but can’t write; another is an excellent writer, but his ideas are commonplace. So they collaborate on an academic article, one contributing the ideas, which are not copyrightable, and the other the prose envelope, and unlike the situation in the superficially similar case of Ballcin v. Wilson, 863 F.Supp. 523 (W.D.Mich. 1994), they sign as coauthors. Their intent to be the joint owners of the copyright in the article would be plain, and that should be enough to constitute them joint authors within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. § 201 (a).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Corbello v. DeVito
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.