Continental Paper Bag Company v. Eastern Paper Bag Company’s Empirical Analysis
210 U.S. 405 · 1908
Citation profile
500 federal appellate · 254 district · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,283 later decisions (84 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2024 · most notably Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. (1950), Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc. (1969)
500 federal appellate · 254 district · 19 state decisions
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedContinental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co. (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co. · Miller v. Eagle Manuf'G Co · Seymour v. Osborne · Deering v. Winona Harvester Works
Cited together with Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. · Sanitary Refrigerator Co. v. Winters · Westinghouse v. Boyden Power Brake Co. · Motion Picture Patents Company v. Universal Film Manufacturing Company · Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc
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 1,283 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The claim is not for a function, but for mechanical means to bring into working relation the folding plate and the cylinder. This relation is the very essence of the invention, and marks the advance upon the pri- or art. It is the thing that never had been done before, and both the lower courts found that the machines of the Continental Company were infringements of it.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“if this were not so[,] most patents would be of little worth. * * * The invention, of course, must be described and the mode of putting it to practical use, but the claims measure the invention.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms”
5 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.