Brennan found that the importance of "the robust debate of public issues" here outweighed the limited power of copyright ownership. He stated that the descriptions of the work were non-copyrightable, and the direct quotations were so few, compared to the size of the work as a whole, that The Nation's article did not constitute an appropriation of Harper's copyright. Brennan criticized the court for finding copyright infringement technically based on the 300 words that were quoted in order to protect Harper's interest in being the first to publish the non-copyrightable historical information in the work. Later treatment The opinion was later cited by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit hearing the case of Salinger v. Random House (1987), in which J.D. Salinger had objected to the publication of his unpublished letters. The court noted that the Supreme Court ruling on Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises (1985) had observed "the scope of fair use is narrower with respect to unpublished works," but denied that the unpublished nature of Salinger's letters was decisive. ("[The Supreme Court] stressed the tailoring of fair use analysis to the particular case... It neither stated nor implied a categorical rule barring fair use of unpublished works." The court went on to note that the meaning of Harper is somewhat ambiguous. Either, they reasoned, there are fewer cases in which fair use may be found when the original work is unpublished or less material may be copied from unpublished works. The court ultimately decided that the first was true, and that unpublished works normally have complete protection against any copying of protected expression. See also List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 371 List of United States Supreme Court copyright case law Nation Magazine v. United States Department of Defense'' Brooks Thomas References Further reading . . . External links United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court United States copyright case law 1985 in United States case law Fair use case law Gerald Ford The Nation