Johnson Johnston Associates Inc v. Re Service Co Inc’s Empirical Analysis
285 F.3d 1046 · 2002
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 24 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 104 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co. (2003), Datamize, LLC v. Plumtree Software, Inc. (2005)
21 federal appellate · 24 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 Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. · Payne v. Tennessee · Rodriguez De Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc. · Warner-Jenkinson Company Inc v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co · Continental Inc v. Gte Sylvania Incorporated
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.
“[W]hen a patent drafter discloses but declines to claim subject matter ... this action dedicates that unclaimed subject matter to the public. Application of the doctrine of equivalents to recapture subject matter deliberately left unclaimed would conflict with the primacy of the claims in defining the scope of the patentee's exclusive right.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] patentee cannot narrowly claim an invention to avoid prosecution scrutiny by the PTO, and then, after patent issuance, use the doctrine of equivalents to establish infringement because the specification discloses equivalents.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Consistent with its scope definition and notice functions, the claim requirement presupposes that a patent applicant defines his invention in the claims, not in the specification. After all, the claims, not the specification, provide the measure of the patentee's right to exclude.”
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.