Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. v. Sales Affiliates, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
233 F.2d 148 · 1956
Citation profile
47 federal appellate · 13 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions — most recently September 1998 · most notably Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. United States Plywood Corp. (1958), In re Land (1966)
47 federal appellate · 13 district · 1 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.
Relationships
Applies 35 U.S.C. § 102 · 35 U.S.C. § 112 · 35 U.S.C. § 145
Relies on Miller v. Eagle Manuf'G Co · Federal Communications Commission v. WJR, Goodwill Station, Inc. · Alexander Milburn Co. v. Davis-Bournonville Co. · Dow Chemical Co. v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing 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 104 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * the mere location of the optimum conditions of use for a known composition of matter does not constitute `invention' so as entitle the discoverer thereof to a monopoly. That objective, however useful the final result, can be achieved by `patient experiment', * * * no inventive genius is necessary.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A patentee may not arbitrarily select a point in a progressive change and maintain a patent monopoly for all operations in that progressive change falling on one particular side of that arbitrarily selected point. It is only where the selected point corresponds with the physical phenomenon and the patentee has discovered the point at which that physical phenomenon occurs that the maintenance of a patent monopoly is admissible.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The question always is whether the inventive act is of sufficient magnitude to justify the extension of a legal monopoly for the matter covered by the claims.”
2 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.