In re Walter’s Empirical Analysis
39 F.2d 724 · 1930
Citation profile
1 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1999 · most notably Dickinson v. Zurko (1999), In re Hargraves (1931)
1 federal appellate ·
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 Smith v. Whitman Saddle Co. · Knapp v. Will & Baumer Co. · In re Beswick's Appeal
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It should be remembered that the purpose of the law authorizing the grant of patents for designs was to give encouragement to the decorative arts, but it was not the purpose to grant a monopoly over a particular design, even if it presents a new and distinctive appearance, if its creation did not involve invention. The decorative arts would be retarded instead of advanced if one, without the exercise of the inventive faculty, upon seeing a new article come into common use, could draft designs covering all attractive forms of the article and secure patents for them, thus preventing the use of the article by the public, except in its most unattractive form, unless tribute be paid to him who had secured the patents.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In re Harshberger · In re Lobl
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.