Gorham Company v. White’s Empirical Analysis
81 U.S. 511 · 1871
Citation profile
232 federal appellate · 131 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 870 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2024 · most notably Mazer v. Stein (1954), McLean v. Fleming (1877)
232 federal appellate · 131 district · 7 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 Willard v. Presbury
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 870 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]f, in the eye of an ordinary observer, giving such attention as a purchaser usually gives, two designs are substantially the same, if the resemblance is such as to deceive such an observer, inducing him to purchase one supposing it to be the other, the first one patented is infringed by the other.”
123 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Any person who, by his own industry, genius, efforts and expense, has invented and produced any new and original design for a manufacture, bust, statue, alto-relievo or bas-relief; any new and original design for the printing of woollen, silk, cotton or other fabrics; any new and original impression, ornament, pattern, print or picture to be printed, painted, cast or otherwise placed on or worked into any article of manufacture; or any new, useful and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture, the same not having been known or used by others before his invention or production thereof, or patented or described in any printed publication, may, upon •payment'of the fee prescribed and other due proceedings had, the same as in cases of inventions or discoveries, obtain a patent therefor.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Unless, therefore, the patent is to receive such a construction that the act of Congress will afford no protection to a designer against imitations of his invention, we must hold that the sale by the defendant of spoons and forks bearing the designs patented to White in 1867 and 1868 is an infringement of the complainants’ rights.””
1 later decision 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.