Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist
← 488 F.2d 538 - In re Wiggins

In re Wiggins’s Empirical Analysis

488 F.2d 538 · 1973

Citation profile

34
cited by 34 later decisions
August 2011
most recently cited

1 federal appellate · 3 district ·

How this case has been cited

Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently August 2011 · most notably Exxon Research and Engineering Company v. United States (2001), Thomas Betts Corporation v. Litton Systems Inc (1983)

1 federal appellate · 3 district ·

12019731980199020002010decided

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. § 102 · 35 U.S.C. § 103 · 35 U.S.C. § 112

Relies on In re Borkowski · In re LeGrice · Swain v. Mallory · Application of Eric D. Brown · In re Hoeksema

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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

  1. “Every patent application and reference relies to some extent upon knowledge of persons skilled in the art to complement that disclosed in order that it be 'enabling' within the meaning of § 112.”
    2 later decisions quote this exact passage
  2. “In our view, [the alleged anticipatory reference’s] listing of the compounds by name constituted nothing more than speculation about their potential or theoretical existence. The mere naming of a compound in a reference, without more, cannot constitute a description of the compound, particularly when, as in this case, the evidence of record suggests that a method suitable for its preparation was not developed until a date later than that of the reference. If we were to hold otherwise, lists of thousands of theoretically possible compounds could be generated and published which, assuming it would be within the level of skill in the art to make them, would bar a patent to the actual discoverer of a named compound no matter how beneficial to mankind it might be.”
    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.