| Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. | ||||||
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Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued January 16, 1964 Decided March 9, 1964 |
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| Full case name | Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co. | |||||
| Citations | 376 U.S. 225 (more) 84 S.Ct. 784; 11 L.Ed.2d 661 |
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| Prior history | Judgment for plaintiff, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; judgment affirmed, Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit; certiorari granted, 374 U.S. 826. | |||||
| 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, though labeling or other precautions may be required by state law where appropriate to prevent deception as to source. Seventh Circuit reversed. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Black, joined by unanimous court | |||||
| Concurrence | Harlan | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution | ||||||
Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U.S. 225 (1964), was a United States Supreme Court case which limited state law on unfair competition when it prevents the copying of an item that is not covered by a patent.
Justice Hugo Black wrote for a unanimous Court that the 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.
Contents |
Stiffel Co. was a lamp manufacturer that had created a "pole lamp", which was a vertical tube standing upright between the floor and ceiling of a room, and with lamp fixtures along the outside of the tube. Stiffel Co. had secured a mechanical patent and a design patent, granted in 1957, on the pole lamp, and the lamp proved a "decided commercial success," according to the Supreme Court's opinion.[1]
Soon after Stiffel brought the pole lamp to market, the Sears, Roebuck & Co. department store put on the market copies of the lamp. Stiffel Co. brought suit against Sears, for patent infringement and for unfair competition under Illinois law, the latter claim based on Sears allegedly causing confusion in the trade as to the source of the lamps.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, held the patents invalid for "want of invention", but ruled Sears to be guilty of unfair competition because the lamps were "confusingly similar", enjoined Sears from selling the identical lamps, and awarded damages to Stiffel Co.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that under Illinois law, Stiffel had only to prove that there was a "likelihood of confusion as to the source of the products" due to the identical appearance of the lamps.[2] The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether this use of a state's unfair competition law was compatible with U.S. patent law.
Justice Black, in the Court's opinion, reviewed the history of the patent monopoly in English and U.S. law, and wrote that when a patent expires, or when an item is unpatentable, then the item "is in the public domain and may be made and sold by whoever chooses to do so," citing Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co. (1938).[3] The lower courts had erred by using Illinois unfair competition law to effectively give Stiffel Co. a patent monopoly on its unpatented lamp.
The Court continued that "mere inability of the public to tell two identical articles apart is not enough to support an injunction against copying or an award of damages for copying that which the federal patent laws permit to be copied,"[4] though it noted that a state could require that goods be labeled in order to prevent consumers from being misled as to the source; but that this was a trade dress issue, and that such state laws could not go so far as to prohibit the copying of the goods themselves. "What Sears did was to copy Stiffel's design and to sell lamps almost identical to those sold by Stiffel. This it had every right to do under the federal patent laws. That Stiffel originated the pole lamp and made it popular is immaterial."[3]
Justice Harlan concurred in the result but opined that states should be able to prohibit copying if the main purpose of the prohibition is to prevent "palming off" one company's goods as those of another.[5]
Stiffel was reaffirmed in Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc.[6]
Stiffel Co. survived the setback, continuing in business until 2000. At that point, it failed, after 68 years in business. It was described as "the last full-line cast zinc lamp maker in the United States."[7]