Hicks v. Kelsey’s Empirical Analysis
85 U.S. 670 · 1873
Citation profile
39 federal appellate · 20 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 141 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 1997 · most notably Cuno Engineering Corporation v. Automatic Devices Corporation (1941), Sinclair & Carroll Co. v. Interchemical Corp. (1945)
39 federal appellate · 20 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 United States v. Buzzo
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 141 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The use of one material instead of another in constructing a known machine is, in most cases, so obviously a matter of mere mechanical judgment, and not of invention, that it cannot be called an invention, unless some new and useful result, an increase of efficiency, or a decided saving in the operation, is clearly attained. Gorton’s achievement is clearly within the exception and combines the three alternative essentials there stated. His supporter attains a new and useful result, an increase of efficiency and a saving in operation.” ,”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The question is -whether the mere change of material—making- the curve of iron instead of wood and iron—was a sufficient change to constitute invention; the purpose being the same, the means of accomplishing it being the same, and the form of the reach and mode of operation being the same.””
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.