substantial identity
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 280 U.S. 30 - Sanitary Refrigerator Co. v. Winters · 1929Most cited · 1,185 citing opinions
There is a substantial identity, constituting infringement, where a device is a copy of the thing described by the patentee, 'either without variation, or with such variations as are consistent with its being in substance the same thing.
How often courts cite the case defining “substantial identity”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “substantial identity” — 1,185 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.