Crown Die & Tool Co. v. Nye Tool & Machine Works’s Empirical Analysis
261 U.S. 24 · 1923
Citation profile
185 federal appellate · 89 district · 24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 579 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2021 · most notably Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc. (1969), United States v. General Electric Co. (1926)
185 federal appellate · 89 district · 24 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
reviewedNye Tool & Machine Works v. Crown Die & Tool Co. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Waterman v. Mackenzie · Continental Paper Bag Company v. Eastern Paper Bag Company · United Shoe Machinery Corporation v. United States · Gayler v. Wilder · Bement Sons v. National Harrow Company
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 579 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The law as to who should bring a suit at law for damages by infringement of a patent is clearly and correctly stated in Robinson on Patents, § 937, as follows: “ ‘With a single exception the plaintiff in an action at law must be the person or persons in whom the legal title to the patent resided at the time of the infringement. An infringement is an invasion of the monopoly created by the patent, and the law which defines and authorizes this monopoly confers only upon its legal owners the right to institute proceedings for its violation. These owners are the patentee, his assignee, his grantee, or his personal representatives; and none but these are able to maintain an action for infringement in a court of law. * * ’ ””
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`It was obviously not the intention of the Legislature to permit several monopolies to be made out of one, and divided among different persons within the same limits. Such a division would inevitably lead to fraudulent impositions upon persons who desired to purchase the use of the improvement, and would subject a party who, under a mistake as to his rights, used the invention without authority, to be harassed by a multiplicity of suits instead of one, and to successive recoveries of damages by different persons holding different portions of the patent right in the same place.'"”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The government is not granting the common-law right to make, use and vend, but it is granting the incident of exclusive ownership of that common-law right, which cannot be enjoyed save with the common-law right. A patent confers a monopoly. . . . The idea of monopoly held by one in making, using and vending connotes the right in him to do that thing from which he excludes others."”
3 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.