Williams v. Crichton’s Empirical Analysis
84 F.3d 581 · 1996
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 19 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 155 later decisions — most recently August 2020 · most notably Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, Inc. (1998), Herzog v. Castle Rock Entertainment (1999)
27 federal appellate · 19 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
Applies 17 U.S.C. § 101 (§ 101 of the Copyright Act of 1976)
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. · Cities of Charlottesville v. Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Columbia Gas Transmission Corp. · National Labor Relations Board v. International Longshoremen's Ass'n
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 155 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.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“Such a scattershot approach cannot support a finding of substantial similarity because it fails to address the underlying issue: whether a lay observer would consider the works as a whole substantially similar to one another.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[c]onsideration of the total concept and feel of a work, rather than specific inquiry into plot and character development, is especially appropriate in an infringement action involving children's works[.]”
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.