Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
81 F.2d 49 · 1936
Citation profile
101 federal appellate · 12 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 238 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (1991), Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises (1985)
101 federal appellate · 12 district · 7 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 Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co. · Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. · Buck v. Jewell-La Salle Realty Co · Fred Fisher, Inc. v. Dillingham · Dymow v. Bolton
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 238 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]t is enough that substantial parts were lifted; no plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * if by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's Ode On a Grecian Urn, he would be an 'author,' and, if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Defendants were entitled to use, not only all that had gone before, but even the plaintiffs’ contribution itself, if they drew from it only the more general patterns; that is, if they kept clear of its “expression”.”
4 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.