Funk Bros. Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co.’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 127 · 1948
Citation profile
153 federal appellate · 81 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 450 later decisions (29 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2019 · most notably Diamond v. Diehr (1981), Gottschalk v. Benson (1972)
153 federal appellate · 81 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedKalo Inoculant Co. v. Funk Bros. Seed Co. (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 35 U.S.C. § 31 · 35 U.S.C. § 33
Relies on Cuno Engineering Corporation v. Automatic Devices Corporation · Dolbear v. American Bell Telephone Co. · DeForest Radio Co. v. General Electric Co. · Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co. v. Radio Corp. of America
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 450 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“He who discovers a hitherto unknown phenomenon of nature has no claim to a monopoly of it which the law recognizes. If there is to be invention from such a discovery, it must come from the application of the law of nature to a new and useful end.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“combination of species produce[d] ... no enlargement of the range of their utility.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There is no way in which we could call [the bacteria mixture a product of invention] unless we borrowed invention from the discovery of the natural principle itself”
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.