Perris v. Hexamer

Perris v. Hexamer, 99 U.S. 674 (1879), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held a map-maker has no more an exclusive right to use the form of the characters they employ to express their ideas on a map than they have to use the typeface they use for text. Suitably, one could not use copyright to restrict the use of map symbols.