Harold Lloyd Corp. v. Witwer’s Empirical Analysis
65 F.2d 1 · 1933
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 4 district · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 80 later decisions — most recently August 2015 · most notably Arnstein v. Porter (1946), Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, Inc. And Sid & Marty Krofft Productions, Inc. v. McDonald Corporation and Needham, Harper & Steers, Inc., Defendants- Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, Inc. And Sid & Marty Krofft Productions, Inc. v. McDonald Corporation and Needham, Harper & Steers, Inc., Defendants (1977)
31 federal appellate · 4 district · 11 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.
Relationships
Relies on Crown Die & Tool Co. v. Nye Tool & Machine Works · Callaghan v. Myers · Johnston v. Standard Mining Co. · White-Smith Music Publishing Company v. Apollo Company · Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp.
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 80 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`There can be no infringement unless there has been a copying either in whole or in part of the copyrighted work. Some copying is necessary to constitute infringement.' 13 C.J. § 277, note 41.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he plaintiff . . . should be éxpected to state to us what it is in the story that is copyrightable as new and novel and what part of such material, if any, has been misappropriated by the appellant. In the case at bar, if it be assumed that there are such similarities between [the two stories] as to provoke in the casual observer the consciousness that there is such a similarity between them, and that copying may be inferred therefrom, we are still confronted with the fact that mere similarity does not necessarily involve literary piracy or an infringement of a copyright. Such similarities then as exist would require further analysis to determine whether or not they are novel in the story and thus copyrightable. The copyright of the story only covers what is new and novel in it, so that the question of infringement involves a consideration of what is new and novel in the story to which the author has acquired a monopoly which ' has been misappropriated by another.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““one work does not violate the copyright in another simply because there is a similarity between the two, if the similarity results from the fact that both works deal with the same subject or have the same common sources.””
2 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.