Smith v. Bousquet’s Empirical Analysis
111 F.2d 157 · 1940
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently April 2014 · most notably Burroughs Wellcome Co. v. Barr Laboratories, Inc. (1994), Fina Oil & Chemical Co. v. Ewen (1997)
4 federal appellate · 2 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 Townsend v. Smith
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In many inventions the act of conception is clearly distinct, in point of time, from that of reduction; * * *. In many others the work of conception and reduction goes forward almost simultaneously, so nearly so that no date can be fixed as that before which the conception was complete and after which the reduction to practice was begun. This is true in nearly all inventions which are the result of experiment, — where the inventor, instead of evolving the entire art or instrument out of his own thought, conjectures that such an act or substance will subserve a given purpose, and having tried it, finds that it accomplishes the end. The production of a new means by this method is, equally with the former, an inventive act, but at no instant before the experiment succeeds can it be said that the conception of the invention exists in the inventor’s mind. Until that instant it is mere speculation, at most a probable deduction from facts already known; and the same act which reduces it to practice gives to the conception its definite and final form.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“it is apparent from the record that neither [party] had in mind at the time the suggestions were originally made, nor at any time thereafter, until successful tests, if any, were made, what insects, if any, it might be effective against, or how it might be applied to produce the desired results. Accordingly, neither party had a definite idea of the “complete and operative invention” here involved prior to a successful reduction — actual or constructive — of it to practice.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“simultaneous conception and reduction to practice,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.