To impress a woman, George passes himself off as The book drew from 84 Seinfeld episodes that had been broadcast as of the time that the Carol Group published The SAT.

The back cover contained a disclaimer which read, "This book has not been approved or licensed by any entity involved in creating or producing Seinfeld."

Nevertheless, Castle Rock had been very selective in its licenses of Seinfeld merchandise, and had rejected numerous products previously to the publication of The SAT.

In November 1994, Castle Rock contacted Carol Publishing Group concerning its copyright and trademark infringement claims.

The district court entered final judgment against Carol and awarded Castle Rock $403,000 with interest in damages.

The appeals court employed both a "qualitative vs. quantitative" method and a "total concept and feel" approach in determining if Carol Publishing had misappropriated Seinfeld.

The court chose to take the Seinfeld series as a whole, rather than compare the quantity of copied work from each of the 84 episodes individually.

The court held that this was a sufficient quantity of copying to overcome the de minimis threshold alleged by Carol Publishing.

When analyzing the quality of the copied material, the court rejected the defendant's position that Seinfeld trivia constituted facts and was therefore not covered by copyright protection.

The court noted that the book did not quiz readers on such facts as the location of the Seinfeld set or the biographies of the actors, but on characters and events springing from the imagination of the show's authors.

An "ordinary observer", the intended audience, might be misguided in the differences between a book and television program to accurately compare each work's total concept.

The book contained no theme or plot, but only a random and scattered collection of questions, its only concept being a test of Seinfeld trivia.

"[3] But the court further held that the more critical inquiry was whether The SAT merely supplanted the Seinfeld episodes or rather if it added something new, providing new insights, new aesthetics in the manner that the fair use doctrine was meant to enrich society.

The defendants claimed two arguments of transformative qualities in The SAT: first that the subject matter of the work did not bar a finding of fair use, and second that the book was a critique of the show.

Indeed, the court reasoned that the 643 copied elements in the trivia questions was a substantial portion taken for the rather "straight forward" commentary of Seinfeld's meaninglessness, and this weighed against fair use.

The court further reasoned that even though Castle Rock did not intend to enter the trivia book market, the existence of The SAT effectively usurped its right to do so.