Lemelson v. Topper Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
450 F.2d 845 · 1971
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently October 2016 · most notably Bose Corp. v. Linear Design Labs, Inc. (1972), Maclaren v. B-I-W Group Inc. (1976)
21 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 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. § 103 · 35 U.S.C. § 282
Relies on Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc · Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp. · United States v. Adams · General Electric Co. v. International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers · Byrne v. Karalexis
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A patent may not be obtained . . 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
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.