Parker v. Flook’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
181 federal appellate · 103 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 687 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Diamond v. Diehr (1981), Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980)
181 federal appellate · 103 district · 4 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
Applies 35 U.S.C. § 100 · 35 U.S.C. § 101 · 35 U.S.C. § 103
Relies on Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co. · United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Gottschalk v. Benson · White v. Dunbar
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 687 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A competent draftsman could attach some form of post-solution activity to almost any mathematical formula; the Pythagorean theorem would not have been patentable, or partially patentable, because a patent application contained a final step indicating that the formula, when solved, could be usefully applied to existing surveying techniques.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Schrader · In re Bilski“The rule that the discovery of a law of nature cannot be patented rests, not on the notion that natural phenomena are not processes, but rather on the more fundamental understanding that they are not the kind of “discoveries” that the statute was enacted to protect.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. In re Grams · In re Ferguson
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.