Birdsall v. Coolidge’s Empirical Analysis
93 U.S. 64 · 1876
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 20 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 161 later decisions (21 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Tilghman v. Proctor (1888), Richmond Screw Anchor Co. v. United States (1928)
45 federal appellate · 20 district · 12 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 Burdell v. Denig · Cheang-Kee v. United States
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 161 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Where the suit is at law, the measure of damages remains unchanged to the present time; the rule still being that the verdict of the jury must be for the actual damages sustained by the plaintiff, subject to the right of the court to enter judgment thereon for any sum above the verdict, not exceeding three times that amount, together with costs. 16 Stat. 207 . Damages of a confpen- satory character may also be allowed to the complainant, suing in equity, in certain cases, where the gains and profits made by the respondent are clearly not sufficient to compensate the complainant for the injury sustained by the unlawful violation of the exclusive right secured to him by the patent. Gains and profits are still the proper measure of damages in equity suits, except in cases where the injury sustained by the infringement is plainly greater than the aggregate of what was made by the respondent, in which event the provision is that the complainant ‘shall be entitled to recover, in addition to the profits to be accounted for by the respondent, the damages he has sustained thereby.’ ””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Still, it is obvious that there cannot be any one rule of damages prescribed which will apply in all cases, even where it is conceded that the finding must be limited to actual damages. Frequent cases arise where proof of an established royalty furnishes a pretty safe guide both for the instructions of the court and the finding of the jury. Reported cases of undoubted authority- may be referred to which support that proposition; and yet it is believed to be good law, that the rule cannot be applied without qualification, where the patented improvement has been used only to a limited extent and for a short time, but that in such a case the jury should find less than the amount of the license fee; and it is admitted in several cases that the circumstances may be such that the finding should be larger than the royalty.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(c) ompensatory damages and actual damages mean the same thing; that is, that the damages shall be the result of the injury alleged and proved, and that the amount awarded shall be precisely commensurate with the injury suffered ....”
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.