Pickering v. McCullough’s Empirical Analysis
104 U.S. 310 · 1881
Citation profile
118 federal appellate · 47 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 361 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 1981 · most notably Cuno Engineering Corporation v. Automatic Devices Corporation (1941), Lincoln Engineering Co of Illinois v. Stewart-Warner Corporation (1938)
118 federal appellate · 47 district ·
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 Reckendorfer v. Faber · Hailes v. Van Wormer
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 361 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. “All the devices of which the alleged combination is made are confessedly old. No claim is made for any one of them singly as an independent invention. It must be conceded that a new combination, if it produces new and useful results, is. patentable, though all the constituents of the combination were well known and in common use before the combination was made. But the results must be a product of the combination, and not a mere aggregate of several results, each the complete product of one of the combined elements. Combined results are not necessarily a novel result, nor are-they an old result obtained in a new and improved manner. Merely bringing old devices into juxtaposition, and there allowing each to work out its own effect, without the production of something novel, is not invention.” ■”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““(2) A combination of old elements is not patentable unless they all so enter into it as that each qualifies every other. It must either form a new machine of distinct character and function, or produce a result which is not the mere aggregate of separate contributions, but is due to the joint and co-. operating action of all the elements.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““The patent was for an improvement in the manufacture of moulding crucibles and pots, made of a plastic material composed of black lead and fire clay. It appeared that difficulty had been experienced in removing the crucibles from the mould, in consequence of the adhesive nature of the black lead mixture employed in the manufacture. The invention obviated this difficulty, and by an improved mode of manufacture much labor and expense were saved, and crucibles were produced which were superior to those made by any particular mode known prior to the device in question. It was held that this did not involve invention.””
1 later decision 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.