Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 78.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

27 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

come out ahead on factor 1. 

And if you think that’s just Shakespeare, here are a cou-
ple  more. 
(Once  you  start  looking,  examples  are  every-
where.)  Lolita,  though  hard  to  read  today,  is  usually 
thought one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.  But 
the plotline—an adult man takes a room as a lodger; em-
barks on an obsessive sexual relationship with the preteen 
daughter of the house; and eventually survives her death, 
remaining marked forever—appears in a story by Heinz von
Lichberg written a few decades earlier.  Oh, and the girl’s
name is Lolita in both versions.  See generally M. Maar, The
Two Lolitas (2005).  All that said, the two works have little 
in  common  artistically;  nothing  literary  critics  admire  in 
the second Lolita is found in the first.  But to the majority?
Just two stories of revoltingly lecherous men, published for 
profit.  So even factor 1 of the fair-use inquiry would not aid 
Nabokov.  Or take one of the most famed adventure stories 
ever  told.  Here  is  the  provenance  of  Treasure  Island,  as 
Robert Louis Stevenson himself described it: 

“No  doubt  the  parrot  once  belonged  to  Robinson  Cru-
soe.  No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from [Edgar Al-
lan] Poe.  I think little of these, they are trifles and de-
tails;  and  no  man  can  hope  to  have  a  monopoly  of
skeletons or make a corner in talking birds. . . . It is my
debt  to  Washington  Irving  that  exercises  my  con-
science,  and  justly  so,  for  I  believe  plagiarism  was
rarely  carried  farther.  . . .  Billy  Bones,  his  chest,  the 
company  in  the  parlor,  the  whole  inner  spirit  and  a 
good deal of the material detail of my first chapters—
all were there, all were the property of Washington Ir-
ving.”  My First Book—Treasure Island, in 21 Syracuse
University  Library  Associates  Courier  No.  2,  p.  84 
(1986). 

Odd that a book about pirates should have practiced piracy? 
Not really, because tons of books do—and not many in order