In Re Patrick H. O'farrell, Barry A. Polisky and David H. Gelfand’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 28 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 76 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably Regents of the University of California v. Lilly & Co. (1997), Enzo Biochem, Inc. v. Calgene, Inc. (1999)
1 federal appellate · 28 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 Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc · Marathon Oil Co. v. United States · Hybritech Inc. v. Monoclonal Antibodies, Inc. · Lindemann Maschinenfabrik Gmbh v. American Hoist and Derrick Company · Panduit Corporation v. Dennison Manufacturing Co
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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“one must be motivated to do more than merely to “vary all parameters or try each of numerous possible choices until one possibly arrived at a successful result, where the prior art gave either no indication of which parameters were critical or no direction as to which of many possible choices is likely to be successful.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] patent may not be obtained ... if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“what was “obvious to try” was to explore a new technology or general approach that seemed to be a promising field of experimentation, where the prior art gave only general guidance as to the particular form of the claimed invention or how to achieve it.”
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.