Keystone Driller Co. v. Northwest Engineering Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
294 U.S. 42 · 1935
Citation profile
67 federal appellate · 19 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 172 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2016 · most notably Warner-Jenkinson Company Inc v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co (1997), Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co. (2002)
67 federal appellate · 19 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
reviewedNorthwest Engineering Corp. v. Keystone Driller Co. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Keystone Driller Co. v. General Excavator Co. · I. T. S. Rubber Co. v. Essex Rubber Co. · Shepard v. Carrigan · Grinnell Washing Mach Co v. E E Johnson Co · Smith v. Magic City Kennel Club, Inc.
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 172 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that where such broad claims are denied and a narrower substituted, the patentee is estopped to read the granted claim as the equivalent of those which were rejected.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We are convinced that the fixation of the scoop (in an excavator) to the stick, the pivoting of a drop bottom near the front of the scoop which could be unlatched to drop the contents and closed by checking the momentum of the scoop, and the addition of rake teeth at the sides of the scoop, were all old in the art, and that the combination of them and adaptation of the combined results was a mere aggregation of old elements requiring no more than mechanical skill, and were not, therefore, patentable invention.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“We hold, in view of the prior art and of the file wrapper, the petitioner is not entitled to a broad reading of the claim.”
1 later decision 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.