Smith v. Snow’s Empirical Analysis
294 U.S. 1 · 1935
Citation profile
268 federal appellate · 64 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 714 later decisions (44 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2015 · most notably Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. (1995), Phillips v. AWH Corp. (2005)
268 federal appellate · 64 district · 4 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
reviewedSnow v. Smith (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co. · Washburn Moen Manuf'G Co v. Beat 'Em All Barbed-Wire Co · Continental Paper Bag Company v. Eastern Paper Bag Company · McClain v. Ortmayer
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 714 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he claims of the patent, not its specifications, measure the invention.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“if the claim were fairly susceptible of two constructions, that should be adopted which will secure to the patentee his actual invention”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is of no moment that in the course of the proceedings in the Patent Office the rejection of narrow claims was followed by the allowance of the broader claim 1.”
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.