Rebecca Reyher and Ruth Gannett v. Children's Television Workshop and Tuesday Publications, Inc.

How courts have described this case

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

• explaining that where two works have similar or identical themes, they will employ the same unprotectable scenes á faire
• noting that “ex pression in more or less stereotyped form” is not protectable
• finding that two children’s books differed in their “total feel” when the plaintiffs work extensively developed its characters, while “the defendant’s story [was] barren of meaningful setting or character development in its attempt to present its theme”
• “[T]he essence of infringement lies in taking not a general theme but its particular expression through similarities of treatment, details, scenes, events and characterization.”
• “[W]here a lost child is the protagonist, there is likely to be a reunion with parents.”
• “The difficult task in an infringement action is to distill the nonprotected idea from protected expression.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).