Gardner v. Herz’s Empirical Analysis
118 U.S. 180 · 1886
Citation profile
47 federal appellate · 8 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 115 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1970 · most notably Hill v. Wooster (1890), Florsheim v. Schilling (1890)
47 federal appellate · 8 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 Mahn v. Harwood · Thompson v. Boisselier · Pennsylvania Co v. Locomotive Engine Safety Truck Co · Yale Lock Manuf'G Co v. Greenleaf
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 115 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““TTider the act of July 4, 1836, (5 St. p. 119, § 6,) in force when these patents were granted, the patentee was required to be a person who had ‘ discovered or invented’ a ‘ new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter,’ or a ‘new and useful improvement in any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.’ In the act of July 8, 1870, (16 St. p. 201, § 24,) the patentee was required to be a person who had ‘invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof; ’ and that language is reproduced in section 4886, Itev. St, So it is not enough that a thing shall be new, and in the sense that in the shape or form in which it is produced it shall not have been before known, and that it shall be useful, but it must, under the constitution and the statute, amount to an invention or discovery.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“But a patent cannot be taken out for an article old in purpose and shape and mode of use, when made for the first time out of an existing material, and with accompaniments before applied to such an article, merely because the idea has occurred that it would be a good thing to make the article out of that particular old material.”
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.