Railroad Supply Company v. Elyria Iron & Steel Company’s Empirical Analysis
244 U.S. 285 · 1917
Citation profile
146 federal appellate · 32 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 215 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2016 · most notably Hart Steel Company v. Railroad Supply Company (1917), Triplett v. Lowell (1936)
146 federal appellate · 32 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedRailroad Supply Co. v. Elyria Iron & Steel Co. (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Atlantio Works v. Brady Brady · Mast Foos Company v. Stover Manufacturing Company · Roberts v. Ryer · Market Street Cable Railway Co. v. Rowley
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 215 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A mere carrying forward of the original thought, a change only in form, proportions, or degree, doing the same thing in the same way, by substantially the same means, with better results, is not such an invention as will sustain a patent. Roberts v. Ryer, 91 U. S. 150 [ 23 L. Ed. 267 ]; Belding Mfg. Co. v. Challenge Corn Planter Co., 152 U. S. 100 [ 14 S. Ct. 492 , 38 L. Ed. 370 ]; Market Street Cable Ry. Co. v. Rowley, 155 U. S. 621 , 629 [ 15 S. Ct. 224 , 39 L. Ed. 284 ].””
4 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.