National Development Co. v. Gray’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably 5 Mass. App. Ct. 253 - Steranko v. Inforex, Inc. (1977), Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. Ciavatta (1988)
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 27 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.
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp. · Solomons v. United States · Standard Parts Co. v. Peck · Dalzell v. Dueber Watch-Case Manuf'G Co · Hapgood v. Hewitt
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One by merely entering an employment requiring the performance of services of a noninventive nature does not lose his rights to any inventions that he may make during the employment ... and this is true even if the patent is for an improvement upon a device or process used by the employer or is of such great practical value as to supersede the devices or processes with which the employee became familiar during his employment____ The law looks upon an invention as the property of the one who conceived, developed and perfected it, and establishes, protects and enforces the inventor’s rights in his invention unless he has contracted away those rights.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“If the employee fails to reach his goal the loss falls upon the employer, but if he succeeds in accomplishing the prescribed result then the invention belongs to the employer even though the terms of employment contain no express provision dealing with the ownership of whatever inventions may be developed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“”... Even though the drawing was prepared in his own home, we think it came within the scope of his employment by the plaintiff and that it belonged to the plaintiff no less than if the drawing was made at the plaintiff’s shop. [Citing cases.] ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.