Wiebe v. Metz & Wiebe

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that a strategy book on the game of Scrabble did not infringe copyright of games’' author
• noting that because of the unavoidable expression required to restate the nonprotectible ideas in plaintiff’s work, a finding of infringing similarity of expression would effectively grant a copyright in the work’s nonprotectible ideas
• approving Second Circuit case holding that a movie studio’s subsequent use of author’s research and theory on the Hindenberg explosion was noninfringing absent wholesale appropriation of the work
• finding no copyright infringement where the similarities between the works were “no more than the similarity that must unavoidably be produced by anyone who wishes to use and restate the unprotectable ideas contained in [the copyrighted] work”
• allowing similarity between compilations absent duplicative selection, 17 coordination, and arrangement
• “[T]he degree of substantial similarity required to show infringement varies according to the type of work and the ideas expressed in it.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).