UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

An Important Decision Relating to the Future of the Fine Arts

In the decision of the suit of the Gorham Manufacturing Company vs. White, the Supreme Court of the United States has rendered signal and important service to the progress of the fine arts. By the statute of 1842, Congress authorized the Commissioner to grant letters patent to those “whose industry, genius, efforts, and expense” should produce new designs for printing, statues, bas reliefs; in short, for all forms of ornamentation. It was the intent of this act that the art of decoration should enjoy the fostering care and production which has conferred such conspicuous benefit upon the American inventions in the mechanic arts; and in construing this law in such manner as to give practical protection to the designer, the Court has, doubtless, lent a valuable impulse to the artistic culture of the country.

Although passed 20 years ago, this act has remained almost wholly a dead letter. Very few suits were brought under it at the circuit, and, until the present, none have been carried to the Supreme Court.

The result has been that infringements of design patents have become almost universal. No sooner did a pattern, devised and introduced a great expense, become popular in the market, then it was copied by other manufacturers, who thus, without risk, and almost without loss of business consideration, enjoyed the fruits of the genius and enterprise of others. This became at last a serious evil, which seemed to threaten the very existence of American design, for no one could afford to employ a corps of artists and incur the cost to bringing new goods into the market, if his property in the result was open to be shared by all the world.

This was the state of the business which the Gorham Manufacturing Company undertook to remedy. They were, as everyone knows, foremost among American silver-smiths for the beauty and novelty of their goods. Undismayed by the growing practice of infringement which disgraced the trade, they kept a large corps of artists in their employ, whose business it was to devise new and beautiful forms and decorations. These were, as a general rule, copied by others, and the Gorham Company resolved to see whether the law which had promised them protection was adequate to furnish them relief against this great and serious mischief. They have carried on this good fight for art and their rights for six years, unaided, saved by the moral support of the trade, and the decision of the Supreme Court has at last crowned their courage and endurance with a brilliant triumph. They selected, as the ground on which to make their fight, the patent for the design of the well-known Cottage pattern of spoons and forks. The infringers called their goods the Gothic pattern, and had, also, a patent, but the Gorham Company charged that this was an evident copy of their design, varied only for the purpose of escaping the law. It was an additional grievance in this case, that the cottage goods were in silver, while the imitation was in base metal.

They proved, by nearly all the leading silver-smiths of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and the West, that the defendants’ goods were so nearly like the plaintiffs’ that ordinary purchasers would mistake the one for the other. They further showed the great value of their design, which was pronounced by an eminent dealer the best plain pattern he had ever seen, and which was estimated by another leading silver-smith to be, in his judgment, worth $50,000 at least. And they call witnesses in the trade who narrated occasions when they had actually mistaken one pattern for the other.

None of these facts were denied by the defendants, who rested their case solely upon the fact, not controverted by the Gorham Company, that there were certain differences in the details of the two designs, which experts and persons accustomed to look at silver-ware would certainly observe. And the question was thus fairly raised whether a patent for a design was infringed if the infringer was clever enough to produce upon the eye the same artistic effect, and yet vary from the details shown and described in the patent. The plaintiffs claim that if, to the eye of the purchaser, the resemblance was so close that the patterns were the same, then that, in law, they must be deemed the same; While the defendants urged that it was for experts and designers to determine the identity of the pattern.

The cause was heard in Newport in the summer of 1870, and the views of the defendants were sustained by the opinion of the Court.

This doctrine went to the root of the matter. If it was sound, design patents were of no value, for it is always easy to vary the details of a work of art, and still preserve the same artistic effect and the same result on the eye of the observer. To such a rule, the Gorham Company, and, indeed, the fine arts of the country, could not submit. And they therefore appealed their cause to the Supreme Court, which has just decided it in their favor, and has revised the doctrine of the court below.

The value of the doctrine of this decision to the artistic progress of the country can scarcely be over-rated. Inventors of designs now stand on the same level with inventors of machines. The beautiful arts may now go into business, and vie with their mechanical sisters in the successful pursuit of wealth. It will now become more than ever for the interest of the great silversmiths to aim at the production of new and varied compositions, and to engage corps of trained artists to aid them in their competition. Fostered and sustained by the strong arm of the law we may, at length, expect to see American manufacturers as admirable for their beauty as they are for their ingenuity.

For this important result, the country must thank the Gorham Manufacturing Company, whose courage and resolution, have brought it about.