National Automatic Device Co. v. Lloyd’s Empirical Analysis
40 F. 89 · 1889
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently August 1999
3 federal appellate · 1 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.
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is urged that this machine is susceptible of being utilized as a toy or child’s plaything; but it is a sufficient answer to this suggestion that no such use has been as yet made. The patent has been very recently issued, and it is possible that a useful application may yet be found for it; but, as the case now stands, the only use to which the invention has been put being for gambling purposes, I must hold that it is not a useful device, within the meaning of the patent law, as its use so far has been only pernicious and hurtful.””
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.