Compco Corp. v. Day-Brite Lighting, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
385 federal appellate · 97 district · 146 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,240 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2015 · most notably Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation (1971), Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. (1964)
385 federal appellate · 97 district · 146 state decisions — followed in 20 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedDay-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Compco Corp. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. · Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co. · Federal Power Commission v. Southern California Edison Co. · Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Compco Corp.
Cited together with Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. · Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp. · Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc. · Goldstein v. California · Lear, Inc. v. Adkins
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 1,240 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“which identifies the maker to the trade, or that there may be”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he federal policy, found in Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution and in the implementing federal statutes, of allowing free access to copy whatever the federal patent and copyright laws leave in the public domain,”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“considerable evidence of the care taken by Compco to prevent customer confusion, including clearly labeling both the fixtures and the containers in which they were shipped and not selling through manufacturers' representatives who handled competing lines.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.