Antonio Jesus Flores v. the State of Texas

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• affirming grant of summary judgment to defendants who appropriated a de minimis portion of the plaintiff’s musical composition and used it throughout their own work
• “Because the degree of similarity is high in such cases, the dispositive question is whether the copying goes to trivial or substantial elements.”
• no substantial similarity where allegedly infringing work sampled a three note sequence and repeated it on loop
• “Plaintiff may rely only upon those elements protected by his copyright over the musical composition—not those attributable to his performance of the piece or the sound recording”
• “[N]o plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate.” (quoting Sheldon v. Metro–Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 81 F.2d 49, 56 (2d Cir. 1936))
• reviewing grant of summary judgment

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).