Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios Inc’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
648 federal appellate · 304 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,110 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises (1985), Fogerty Fantasy Inc (1994)
648 federal appellate · 304 district · 26 state decisions — followed in 10 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
reviewedUniversal City Studios, Inc. v. Sony Corp. of America (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 1 U.S.C. § 1 (Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002) · 15 U.S.C. § 1125 (§ 43 of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act)) · 17 U.S.C. § 101 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976) · 17 U.S.C. § 102 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976) · 17 U.S.C. § 105 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976) · 17 U.S.C. § 107 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976) · 17 U.S.C. § 111 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976) · 17 U.S.C. § 411 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976)
Relies on Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc. · United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. · Castor v. United States · Broadcast Music, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.
Cited together with Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises · Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. · Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H
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 2,110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the historic kinship between patent law and copyright law”
109 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“every commercial use of copyrighted material is presumptively an unfair exploitation of the monopoly privilege that belongs to the owner of the copyright.”
42 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.