Dobson v. Hartford Carpet Co.’s Empirical Analysis
114 U.S. 439 · 1885
Citation profile
25 federal appellate · 13 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 117 later decisions (15 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2017 · most notably Tilghman v. Proctor (1888), Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company v. Wolf Brothers & Company (1916)
25 federal appellate · 13 district · 2 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Root v. Railway Co. · Littlefield v. Perry · Garretson v. Clark · Mowry v. Whitney · Seymour v. McCormick
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 117 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When a patent is for an improvement, and not for an entirely new machine or contrivance, the patentee must show in what particulars his improvement lias added to the usefulness of the machine or contrivance. He must separale its results distinctly from those of the other parts, so that the benefits derived from it may be distinctly seen and appreciated. The rale on this head is aptly stated by Hr. Justice Blatchford in the court below. ‘The pat-' puteo.’ he says, ‘must in every case give evidence tending to separate or apportion the defendant’s profits and the patentee’s damages between the patented feature and the unpntented features, and such evidence must be reliable and tangible, and not conjectural or speculative; or he must show, by equally reliable and satisfactory evidence, that the profits and damages are to be calculated on the whole machine, for the reason that tlio entire value of the whole machine, as a marketable article, is properly and legally attributable to tlie patented feature.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“that the profits and damages are to be calculated on the whole machine for the reason that the entire value of the whole machine, as a marketable article, is properly and legally attributable to the patented feature.... [T]o attribute, in law, the entire profit to the [invention] to the exclusion of the other merits, unless it is shown, by evidence, as a fact, that the profit ought to be so attributed, not only violates the statutory rules of 'actual damages' and of 'profits to be accounted for,' but confounds all distinctions between cause and effect.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the entire profit to the [patent holders], per yard, in the manufacture and sale of carpets of the patented designs, and not merely the value which the designs contributed to the carpets.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.