Caswell v. . Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1874
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1962 · most notably McLean v. Fleming (1877), Standard Paint Company v. Trinidad Asphalt Manufacturing Company (1911)
3 federal appellate · 33 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.
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Nor is the question whether the name used as a trade-mark will convey an exact notion of how to compound an article, so that one reading it will be able to make a like article. If the necessary effect is to inform the reader or hearer of the general characteristics and composition of the thing, it is a name which niay be used with equal truth by any one who has made and offers for sale a thing compounded of the same ingredients, and who desires to express to the public the same facts. Nor does the coupling together, in a new combination >f words which before that had been used apart, and had entered into the common scientific vocabulary, give a right to the exclusive use of such combination, where it is indicative, not of origin, maker, use, and ownership alone, but also of quality and other characteristics.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““There is no principle more firmly settled in the law of trade-marks than that words or phrases which have been in common use, and which indicate the character, kind, quality, and composition of the thing, may not be appropriated by any one to his exclusive use.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Words are but symbols. When they are used to signify a fact, or when, with what purpose soever used, they do signify a fact, which others may by the use of them express with equal truth, others have an equal right to them for that purpose.””
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.