Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co.
1964 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U.S. 225 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case that limited state law on unfair competition when it prevents the copying of an item that is not covered by a patent.[1]
Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. | |
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Argued January 16, 1964 Decided March 9, 1964 | |
Full case name | Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. |
Citations | 376 U.S. 225 (more) |
Case history | |
Prior | Judgment for plaintiff, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; judgment affirmed, Stiffel Co. v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 313 F.2d 115 (7th Cir. 1963); cert. granted, 374 U.S. 826 (1963). |
Holding | |
Respondent, whose design and mechanical patents are invalid for want of invention, cannot, under a state unfair competition law, obtain an injunction against copying its product or an award of damages for such copying, as such use of state law conflicts with the exclusive power of the federal government to grant patents only to true inventions and then only for a limited time. An unpatented article, being in the public domain, may be freely copied, but labeling or other precautions may be required by state law where appropriate to prevent deception as to source. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Black, joined by unanimous |
Concurrence | Harlan |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. art. 1 § 8 | |
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings | |
International News Service v. Associated Press |
Justice Hugo Black wrote for a unanimous Court that the US Constitution reserved power over intellectual property such as patents to the federal government exclusively. Since the trial court had found Stiffel's patent invalid as insufficiently inventive, its product design was thus in the public domain and no state law could be used to prevent Sears from copying it.
The Supreme Court made a similar ruling in a companion case decided the same day, Compco Corp. v. Day-Brite Lighting, Inc..[2]
The two cases were the first decisions of the Supreme Court that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution prevents from states passing their own patent or patent-like laws. The issue had been raised but not decided in Gibbons v. Ogden,[3] in which Attorney General Wirt argued on behalf of the United States[4] for federal patent preemption of New York's grant of a steamboat patent to Robert Fulton.[5]