George B. Spero v. Howard J. Ringold and George Rosenkranz’s Empirical Analysis
377 F.2d 652 · 1967
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 12 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently February 2015 · most notably Ralston Purina Co. v. Far-Mar-Co, Inc. (1985), Invitrogen Corporation v. Clontech Laboratories Inc (2005)
6 federal appellate · 12 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.
Relationships
Relies on Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik · Townsend v. Smith · Application of John A. Nelson and Anthony C. Shabica · Heard v. Burton
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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is therefore the formation in the mind of the inventor of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention as it is thereafter to be applied in practice that constitutes an available conception within the meaning of the patent law. A priority of conception is established when the invention is made sufficiently plain to enable those skilled in the art to understand it.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In re Jolley · Langer v. Kaufman“Because conception is a mental act, `it must be proven by evidence showing what the inventor has disclosed to others and what that disclosure means to one of ordinary skill in the art.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“We fail to see why the act of filing an application to entitle an applicant to a date of constructive reduction to practice imparts anything more to the disclosure than a procedural advantage. It cannot and does not change the import of the disclosure. On the instant before filing, the disclosure teaches no more and no less than it does on the instant after filing. Thus, if the application as filed discloses the invention in issue, as the board has here assumed that it does, it seems inconsistent to deny the same effect to the same disclosure in a prior but unfiled draft of the same application.”
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.