Naamlooze Venootschafs v. Coe’s Empirical Analysis
132 F.2d 573 · 1942
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 6 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently November 1965
4 federal appellate · 6 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 Corona Cord Tire Co. v. Dovan Chemical Corp. · Tyler v. Boston · Mellon 206 1920 v. New Jersey Shipbuilding & Dredging Company · Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co. v. Coe · Buggs v. Ford Motor Co.
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . The appellant urges that analogical reasoning cannot be relied upon in the field of chemistry but only experiment. It is true that analogical reasoning is more restricted in chemistry than in the field of mechanics. Toledo Rex Spray Co. v. California Spray Chemical Co., 6 Cir., 1920, 268 F. 201 ; Naylor v. Alsop Process Co., 8 Cir., 1909, 168 F. 911 . This is because chemistry is essentially an experimental science in which predictions cannot be made with the same certainty that they can be in mechanics. General Electric Co. v. Laco-Philips Co., 2 Cir., 1916, 233 F. 96 ; cf. Corona Co. v. Dovan Corp., 1928, 276 U.S. 358 , 368, 48 S.Ct. 380 , 72 L.Ed. 610 ; Tyler v. Boston, 1868, 7 Wall. 327 , 330, 19 L.Ed. 93 . It is therefore true to say that since Ecldand did not name hypochlorite solution as a bleaching agent but only ozone, it does not necessarily follow that hypochlorite solution would be a suitable substitute. Experimentation may well have been necessary to determine this. But from the facts that prevision is not certain in chemistry, that progress in the chemical art is reached largely through experiment, and that patents are often upheld where the inventor stumbles upon a discovery (Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik v. Kalle, C.C.S.D.N.Y1899, 94 F. 163 , it does not follow that every new and useful result accomplished by experiment is patentable. Hamilton Laboratories v. Massengill, 6 Cir., 1940, 111 F.2d 584 , certiorari denied, 1940, 311 U.S. 688 , 61 S.Ct. 65 , 85 ”
2 later decisions 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.