McCormick v. Talcott’s Empirical Analysis
61 U.S. 402 · 1857
Citation profile
109 federal appellate · 23 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 215 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 1995 · most notably Sanitary Refrigerator Co. v. Winters (1929), Westinghouse v. Boyden Power Brake Co. (1898)
109 federal appellate · 23 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.
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 215 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“-If he be the original ixjventor of the device or machine called the divider, he will have a right to treat as infringers all who make dividers operating on the same principle, aixd performing the same functions by analogous means or equivalent combinations, even though the infringing machine may be an improvement of the original, and patentable as such. But if the invention, claimed be itself but an Improvement on a known machine by a mere change of form or combination of parts, the patentee cannot treat another as axx infringer who has improved the original machine by use of a different form or combination performing the same functions. The im entor of the first improvement cannot invoke the doctrine of equivalents to suppress all other improvements which are not mere colorable invasions of the first.””
13 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.