Catalina Marketing International Inc v. Coolsavingscom Inc’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
48 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 163 later decisions — most recently August 2024 · most notably In Re Cruciferous Sprout Litigation (2002), 387 F. Supp. 2d 869 - CIVIX-DDI, LLC v. Cellco Partnership (2005)
48 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 Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. · Warner-Jenkinson Company Inc v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co · Cybor Corporation v. Fas Technologies, Inc., and Fastar Ltd., Defendants-Cross
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 163 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“where a patentee defines a structurally complete invention in the claim body and uses the preamble only to state a purpose or intended use for the invention.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Inventor A invents a shoe polish for shining shoes (which, for the sake of example, is novel, useful, and nonobvious). Inventor A receives a patent having composition claims for shoe polish. Indeed, the preamble of these hypothetical claims recites “a composition for polishing shoes.” Clearly, Inventor B could not later secure a patent with composition claims on the same composition because it would not be novel. Likewise, Inventor B could not secure claims on the method of using the composition for shining shoes because the use is not a “new use” of the composition but, rather, the same use shining shoes. Suppose Inventor B discovers that the polish also repels water when rubbed onto shoes. Inventor B could not likely claim a method of using the polish to repel water on shoes because repelling water is inherent in the normal use of the polish to shine shoes. In other words, Inventor B has not invented a “new” use by rubbing polish on shoes to repel water. Upon discovering, however, that the polish composition grows hair when rubbed on bare human skin, Inventor B can likely obtain method claims directed to the new use of the composition to grow hair. Hence, while Inventor B may obtain a blocking patent on the use of Inventor A’s composition to grow hair, this method patent does not bestow on Inventor B any right with respect to the patented composition. Even though Inventor A’s claim recites “a composition for polishing shoes,” Inventor B cannot invoke this use limitation to ”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A preamble is not a claim limitation if the claim body 'defines a structurally complete invention ... and uses the preamble only to state a purported or intended use for the invention.'”
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.