Warner Bros Inc Ag Dc v. American Broadcasting Companies Inc’s Empirical Analysis
654 F.2d 204 · 1981
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 11 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 127 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Warner Bros Inc Ag Dc v. American Broadcasting Companies Inc J (1983), Walker v. Time Life Films, Inc. (1986)
34 federal appellate · 11 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 Ingraham v. Wright · Arnstein v. Porter · Peter Pan Fabrics, Inc. v. Martin Weiner Corp. · Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. · Durham Industries, Inc. v. Tomy 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 127 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Upon any work ... a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well, as more and more of the incident is left out. The last may perhaps be no more than the most general statement of what the [work] is about, and at times might consist only of its title; but there is a point in this series of abstractions where they are no longer protected, since otherwise the [author] could prevent the use of his “ideas,” to which, apart from their expression, his property is never extended.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'a defendant may legitimately avoid infringement by intentionally making sufficient changes in a work which would otherwise be regarded as substantially similar to that of the plaintiff's.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[B]oth heroes fight ... villains; however, this suggested similarity concerns something hardly more specific or particular than the classic theme of good versus evil”
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.