MacGregor v. Johnston’s Empirical Analysis
71 F.2d 165 · 1934
Citation profile
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently March 1965
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * This is not a case where an inexperienced individual inventor was struggling with the solution of a problem. The individuals connected with this controversy, upon both sides, were experienced experts in their respective lines of activity. “When the record is considered as a whole, including the fact that, although the machine tested in Rexburg is said to have worked perfectly in August, 1925, the application for patent was not filed until September, 1926, and all the circumstances surrounding the parties and the occurrences are looked to, we do not feel that the junior party should prevail simply upon the arbitrary oral statements that the occurrences took place in 1925. The memories of men are too treacherous to admit of blind reliance upon them, and of all the records which it seems that the appellant, Johnston, might have produced in the way of documentary evidence, tending to support the alleged dates, nothing really helpful was produced. It seems to have been a case in which the effort was to see how little, rather than how much, could be proven.””
2 later decisions 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.