Nachtman v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
235 F.2d 211 · 1956
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently June 1977
10 federal appellate · 1 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 Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp. · Burlington County Bridge Commission v. Driscoll · Miller v. E. I. duPont de Nemours & Co. · Packwood v. Briggs & Stratton Corp. · John N. Price & Sons v. Maryland Casualty 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A 'jury in a patent case is not free to treat invention as a concept broad enough to include whatever discovery or novelty may impress the jurors favorably. Over the years the courts of the United States, and particularly the Supreme Court, have found meaning implicit in the scheme and purpose of the patent laws which aids in the construction of their general language. In this process, rules and standards have been developed for use as guides to the systematic and orderly definition and application of such a conception as invention in accordance with what the courts understand to be the true meaning of the Constitution and the patent laws. Once such standards and rules are authoritatively announced any finding of ‘invention’ whether by a court or a jury must be consistent with them. “This is no peculiarity of patent law. Jury findings of negligence or proximate cause must comport with common law rules devised to give reasonable and systematic meaning to those generalities. * * * And so it is throughout the body of the common law. This authority and responsibility to keep jury findings within reasoned rules and standards is an essential function of United States judges today as it long has been of common law judges. * * * It stands as a great safeguard against gross mistake or caprice in fact finding.””
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.