Stewart v. Abend’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
245 federal appellate · 98 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 683 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2024 · most notably Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (1994), Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003)
245 federal appellate · 98 district · 3 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
reviewedAbend v. MCA, Inc. (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises · Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid · Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios Inc · Coastal Steel Corp. v. Wheelabrator-Frye, Inc. · De Sylva v. Ballentine
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 683 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(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.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Although dissemination of creative works is a goal of the Copyright Act, the Act creates a balance between the artist’s right to control the work during the term of the copyright protection and the public’s need for access to creative works. The copyright term is limited so that the public will not be permanently deprived of the fruits of an artist’s labors. [Citation omitted]. But nothing in the copyright statutes would prevent an author from hoarding all of his works during the term of the copyright.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster.”
6 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.