In Re James A. Smith and James H. McLaughlin and Sterling Drug, Inc., Intervenor’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
18 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently April 2020 · most notably Baxter International, Inc. v. Cobe Laboratories, Inc. (1996), Petrolite Corporation v. Baker Hughes Incorporated and Baker Performance Chemicals Incorporated (1996)
18 district ·
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
Relies on Cree v. Goldstein · Gotthelf v. Commissioner · Elizabeth v. Pavement Co. · Stassen for President Citizens Committee v. Jordan · South Corporation v. United States
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the invention was ... in public use ... in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“any use of [the claimed] invention by a person other than the inventor who is under no limitation, restriction or obligation of secrecy to the inventor.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Public use” of a claimed invention under section 102(b) has been defined as any use of that invention by a person other than the inventor who is under no obligation of secrecy to the inventor. Such use however, has been held not to be a statutory bar to patentability if the use was primarily for bona fide experimental purposes.... The experiment to improve and perfect the invention must be the real purpose in such public use and not merely incidental and subsidiary. The experimental use exception,[ 1 ] however, does not include market testing where the inventor is attempting to gauge consumer demand for his claimed invention. The purpose of such activities is commercial exploitation and not experimentation. Where, as here, the inventor made the allegedly public use he has the burden of going forward with convincing evidence that the public use activities fall within the experimental use exception. ... In determining the purpose of the alleged experimental use, objective evidence indicating a purpose for such testing and experiment is generally preferred. An inventor’s subjective intent is generally of minimal value.”
1 later decision 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.