Application of Basil Vivian Aller, Richard Norman Lacey, Reginald Harold Hall’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 4 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Pfizer, Inc. v. Apotex, Inc. (2007), Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc. (2008)
9 federal appellate · 4 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 Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co. v. Coe · In re Sola · Allen v. Coe · In re Swenson · In re Swain
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Normally, it is to be expected that a change in temperature, or in concentration, or in both, would be an unpatentable modification. Under some circumstances, however, changes such as these may impart patentability to a process if the particular ranges claimed produce a new and unexpected result which is different in kind and not merely in degree from the results of the prior art. * * * Such ranges are termed `critical' ranges, and the applicant has the burden of proving such criticality. * * * However, even though applicant's modification results in great improvement and utility over the prior art, it may still not be patentable if the modification was within the capabilities of one skilled in the art. * * * More particularly, where the general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges by routine experimentation. * * *”
13 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.