Iowa State University Research Foundation, Inc. v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
621 F.2d 57 · 1980
Citation profile
55 federal appellate · 8 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 107 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2020 · most notably Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises (1985), Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios Inc (1984)
55 federal appellate · 8 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 Castor v. United States · Royal Netherlands Steamship Co. v. Strachan Shipping Co. · Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co. · Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc. · Rosemont Enterprises Inc. v. Random House, Inc.
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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“permits courts to avoid rigid application of the copyright statute when, on occasion, it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The fair use doctrine is not a license for corporate theft, empowering a court to ignore a copyright whenever it determines the underlying work contains material of possible public importance.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Geis involved an author’s unauthorized use of the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. In this almost unique instance, it is at least arguable that the informational value of that film cannot be separated from the photographer’s expression, [citation omitted], thereby indicating that both should be in the public domain. We believe, however, that such situations are rare.”
3 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.