Electric Storage Battery Co. v. Shimadzu’s Empirical Analysis
307 U.S. 5 · 1939
Citation profile
119 federal appellate · 51 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 422 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2020 · most notably Spiegel's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1949), Wl Gore Associates Inc v. Garlock Inc (1983)
119 federal appellate · 51 district · 6 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
reviewedElectric Storage Battery Co. v. Shimadzu (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 35 U.S.C. § 31 · 35 U.S.C. § 32
Relies on Elizabeth v. Pavement Co. · Union Paper-Bag Machine Company v. Murphy · Mumm v. Jacob E. Decker & Sons · Sessions v. Romadka
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 422 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the ordinary use of a machine or the practice of a process in a factory in the usual course of producing articles for commercial purposes is a public use.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A person shall be entitled to a patent unless * * * “(b) the invention was * * * in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or “ (c) he has abandoned the invention * *”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Thus, if a diligent domestic inventor applies, in good faith believing himself to be the first inventor, Section 4923 assures him a patent and gives it priority, despite prior foreign use, even though that use is evidenced by a patent applied for after the invention made in this country. The foreign applicant or patentee cannot carry the date of his invention back of the date of application in this country, as the holder of a later patent for an invention made here would be permitted to do in order to establish priority.”
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.