In Re Daniel S. Fulton and James Huang’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
6 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably Fleming v. Cirrus Design Corporation (2022), Stamps.com Inc. v. Endicia, Inc. (2011)
6 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 Consolidated Edison Co of New York v. National Labor Relations Board · Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc · In re Gartside · In re Rouffet · In re Sang-Su Lee
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in [ 35 U.S.C. § 102 ], if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a finding that the prior art as a whole suggests the desirability of a particular combination need not be supported by a finding that the prior art suggests that the combination claimed by the patent applicant is the preferred, or most desirable, combination.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[O]ur case law does not require that a particular combination must be the preferred, or the most desirable, combination described in the prior art in order to provide motivation for the current invention.”
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.