Rogers v. Grimaldi’s Empirical Analysis
875 F.2d 994 · 1989
Citation profile
52 federal appellate · 13 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 226 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2024 · most notably Cruden Sa v. Bank of New York (1992), Woodsmith Publishing Co. v. Meredith Corp. (1990)
52 federal appellate · 13 district · 6 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
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 1125 (§ 43 of the Trademark Act of 1946 (Lanham Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing Co. · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · Central Hudson Gas Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York
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 226 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“to apply to artistic works only where the public interest in avoiding consumer confusion outweighs the public interest in free expression.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“overextension of Lanham Act restrictions in the area of titles might intrude on First Amendment values”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Tjitles with at least minimal artistic relevance to the work may include explicit statements about the content of the work that are seriously misleading. For example, if the characters in the film in this case had published their memoirs under the title “The True Life Story of Ginger and Fred,” and if the film-maker had then used that fictitious book title as the title of the film, the Lanham Act could be applicable to such an explicitly misleading description of content. But many titles with a celebrity’s name make no explicit statement that the work is about that person in any direct sense; the relevance of the title may be oblique and may become clear only after viewing or reading the work. As to such titles, the consumer interest in avoiding deception is too slight to warrant application of the Lan-ham Act.... Where a title with at least some artistic relevance to the work is not explicitly misleading as to the content of the work, it is not false advertising under the Lanham Act.”
6 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.