Case Citator › Jacobus Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc.

Jacobus Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc.

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Ninth Circuit
Citation
883 F.3d 1111
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
36 of 36
Citing cases (total)
36
Treatment dates
2020
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Jacobus Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc. was overruled in part on the inverse ratio rule. The Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc in Michael Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, rejected that rule after discussing Rentmeester's explanation of it.
More on how this was screened

Later courts continue to apply Rentmeester's other copyright principles. All 36 flagged citations have been read; the confirmed treatment is listed below.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

36 later cases cite Jacobus Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc.; 36 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

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Treatments

Overruled in part

  • The en banc Ninth Circuit rejected the inverse ratio rule that Rentmeester had described as governing proof of copying.

    Michael Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin · Ninth Circuit (en banc) · filed

    That is, “the stronger the evidence of access, the less compelling the similarities between the two works need be in order to give rise to an inference of copying.” Rentmeester, 883 F.3d at 1124. Skidmore proposed an inverse ratio rule instruction, but the court chose not to give the instruction. The court reaffirmed this decision when Skidmore raised the question again after the close of testimony: “We’re not going to give that instruction.” Because the inverse ratio rule, which is not part of the copyright statute, defies logic, and creates uncertainty for the courts and the parties, we take this opportunity to abrogate the rule in the Ninth Circuit and overrule our prior cases to the contrary.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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