Dennis v. Pitner’s Empirical Analysis
106 F.2d 142 · 1939
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 5 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently May 1972 · most notably Universal Oil Products Co. v. Globe Oil & Refining Co. (1943), 218 F. Supp. 1 - Technograph Printed Circuits, Ltd. v. Bendix Aviation Corp. (1963)
17 federal appellate · 5 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 Tilghman v. Proctor · O'Reilly v. Morse · Dolbear v. American Bell Telephone Co. · DeForest Radio Co. v. General Electric Co. · Le Roy v. Tatham
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We believe it to be a sound pronouncement to say — the discovery of a natural phenomenon, or of a quality or attribute of a well-known article, which discovery is of value to mankind, may be entitled to patent protection. The objection frequently offered to the patentability of such a discovery is that it is a law of nature or a principle of nature and for that reason not patentable. Section 31, Title 35, U.S. C.A., authorizes the issuance of a patent to “ ‘Any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof * * * not known or used by others in this country, before his invention or discovery thereof, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof * * *.’ “There would seem to be no valid reason or sound support for a position which would deny to discoveries by researchers in the field of science the protection of our patent laws when such discovery is that an old, or at least well-known chemical product, will, acting in a given state, alone, or combined with other elements or physical elements, produce new, unknown, and unexpected results, where as one who puts together at least two old and well-known chemical substances in certain prescribed proportions and gets new results helpful to man may receive patent protection. In the latter case, patent protection is universally accorded to the di”
2 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.