The work was originally published in 1963 by Melville Nimmer, and was for several decades the only significant treatise in United States copyright law.
The work is routinely cited by domestic and foreign courts at all levels in copyright litigation, and within the United States in at least 2500 judicial opinions.
[1][2] Similarly, the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. published a special issue of the Journal dedicated to the 50th anniversary, in Winter 2013.
Judge Lewis Kaplan considered one of those situations, as described by Nimmer, to be directly relevant, namely that "where a photograph of a photograph or other printed matter is made that amounts to nothing more than slavish copying".
A slavish photographic copy of a painting thus, according to Nimmer, lacks originality and thus copyrightability under the U.S.