Fry v. Rookwood Pottery Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 1 district ·

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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““My invention consists in the application to the surface of the ware after the article has received its final shape, f nd before it is finally glazed or fired, suitable coloring matter in the form of a cloud or spray, as hereinafter described, whereby a particularly soft, delicate background or shading is produced upon the ware, which may be made to gradually fade or vanish in one or more directions, and to blend from one color to another without any perceptible line of demarkation. It consists, furthermore, in heating the ware when hard or glazed upon the surface, and thereafter applying the coloring matter, in manner as hereinafter described, to the hot surface, and finally firing or glazing the decorated article. To carry my invention into effect, the coloring-matter is blown upon the surface of the ware — either in its soft state, in the ‘bisque’ state, or on the glaze before firing — in the form of a cloud or atomized spray or mist, produced by means of any of the usual forms of atomizers which are operated by an air blast, or a steam blast, or by the.lungs of the operator, and which, being well known, need not be herein described. After the ware has thus been decorated, the color is fixed by firing the war.e in the customary manner. I employ the coloring matter either in a liquid or semiliquid form, or in the form of a very dry, 'almost impalpable, powder, as desired. As the coloring matter is blown from the tube of the atomizer, and carried therefrom in a cloud of fine”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fry v. Rookwood Pottery

2. ““It is conceded that the defendants only infringe the first claim of the patent covering the application of color to the clay in its green state before it is fired at all. Color is applied to pottery by the use of mineral pigments carried in a solution of clay. These are technically called ‘slips.’ The gist of Miss Fry’s improvement was the spraying of these slips by the use of an atomizer upon the green clay molded into the desired form. Every other step in the process which she describes was old. The application of the color to the green clay before any firing was confessedly old in the making and decorating of the pottery. The only change claimed to have been effected was in the means by which the color was applied, to wit, by atomizing, rather than by a brush. The only question for the court to decide is whether, in what, had been done before, there was a palpable suggestion of atomizing and spraying color upon pottery as a means of getting better effects in the decoration. It is to bo borne in mind in determining such a question that the function of the court is not to consider what Miss Fry’s actual knowledge of the prior art was, and then to decide whether, with such knowledge1, what she did involved real invention; but the court is bound to assume that she knew everything about the art of applying color to pottery or kindred surfaces which was contained in printed publications or in the public history of the art, and upon that assumption say whether the step she took ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fry v. Rookwood Pottery

3. “adhering to the needle is so small, and its atomization so perfect, that the individual particles of color are hardly discernible upon the object on which they are blown. It will therefore follow that with my distributor, and with one pigment, colored effects may be produced which will descend from the palest tints capable of being produced by the extreme attenuation of the- color through”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fry v. Rookwood Pottery