In re Williams’s Empirical Analysis
171 F.2d 319 · 1948
Citation profile
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently December 2004 · most notably Application of Joseph D. Fisher (1970), In re May (1978)
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 In re Merz · Farbenfabriken of Elberfeld Co. v. Kuehmsted
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In support of the rejection on the ground of lack of novelty, the examiner and the board point out that the compound of the Monatschefte publications is a racemic mixture and, therefore, necessarily contains both dextro rotary and laevo rotary components. It is the position of the Patent Office tribunals that, in view of that fact, the laevo rotary compound, having existed as part of the racemic mixture, cannot be novel. The appealed claim, however, calls for the laevo rotary form “substantially free from the dextro rotary form” and it is evident that the laevo rotary form did not exist in this condition in the mixture of the Monatschefte publications. The existence of a compound as an ingredient of another substance does not negative novelty in a claim to the pure compound, although it may, of course, render the claim unpatentable for lack of invention [now obviousness, § 103]. [Emphasis supplied.]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“substantially free from the dextro rotary form”
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.