Matheson v. Campbell’s Empirical Analysis
78 F. 910 · 1897
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 8 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 1964 · most notably Holland Furniture Co. v. Perkins Glue Co. (1928), Parke-Davis & Co. v. H. K. Mulford Co. (1911)
12 federal appellate · 8 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 Swearingen v. United States · Cochrane v. Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik · City of Savannah v. Kelly · Matheson v. Campbell · Matheson v. Campbell
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The evidence shows conclusively that the statement that they had discovered that ‘any sulpho acid of any radical’ treated according to their process would give the product they said it would was untrue. Briefly stated, the ‘discovery’ which the inventors profess to disclose is that all mono-sulpho acids, and all di-sulpho acids. treated in a prescribed way, will give a specific result, while the fact is that, so far as appears, no mono-sulpho acid thus treated will give such result, and when they professed thus to disclose their ‘discovery’ they either knew that the mono-sulpho acids will not give such result, or else knew nothing about the reaction of mono-sulpho acids under such process. In either case the ‘discovery’ which they disclosed is not the ‘discovery’ which they made, and it is for the discovery or invention which the patentee makes and discloses that patent issues.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““* * # The broad discovery that all sulpho acids may be thus transformed they certainly did not discover, for it is apparently undiscoverable, since most of them cannot be thus transformed by the process of the patent. Some future experimenter will have to make some new discovery, and invent some new process, before these other sulpho acids can be transformed into naphthol-black. We are referred to no authority, and know of no principle, which will sustain the complainant’s contention that he can thus, in the language of the circuit court, ‘speculate on the equivalents of his claimed invention, and thereby oblige the public to resort to experiments in order to determine the scope of the claims of his patent.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““When an alleged infringing compound fails to respond to the various specific tests of identity which the patentee himself has selected and set forth in his patent, he cannot fairly insist that it is identical with his product.””
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.