Tilghman v. Proctor’s Empirical Analysis
102 U.S. 707 · 1880
Citation profile
158 federal appellate · 86 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 550 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2023 · most notably Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co. (1923), Westinghouse v. Boyden Power Brake Co. (1898)
158 federal appellate · 86 district · 2 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on O'Reilly v. Morse · Erastus Corning and John Winslow v. Peter a Burden · Mitchell v. Tilghman
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 550 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“conception[s] of the mind, seen only by [their] effects when being executed or performed.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“If the acids (in the prior art) were accidentally and unwittingly produced, whilst the operators were in pursuit of other and different results, without exciting attention and without its even being known what was done or how it had been done, it would be absurd to say that this was an anticipation of Tilghman’s discovery.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he claim of the patent is not for a mere principle. The chemical principle or scientific fact upon which it is founded is, that the elements of neutral fat require to be severally united with an atomic equivalent of water in order to separate from each other and become free. This chemical fact was not discovered by Tilghman. He only claims to have invented a particular mode of bringing about the desired chemical union between the fatty elements and water.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.