Hailes v. Van Wormer’s Empirical Analysis
87 U.S. 353 · 1873
Citation profile
161 federal appellate · 83 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 438 later decisions (43 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 1989 · most notably Cuno Engineering Corporation v. Automatic Devices Corporation (1941), Altoona Publix Theatres, Inc. v. American Tri-Ergon Corp. (1935)
161 federal appellate · 83 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.
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 438 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Merely bringing old devices into juxtaposition, and there allowing each to work out its own effect without the production of something novel, is not invention.” Hailes v. Van Wormer, 20 Wall. 353 , 368 ( 22 L. Ed. 241 ).”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage“' “The first claim in the reissued patent, dated February 3, 1883, is unquestionably too broad to be sustained, unless limited to the means described in the specification. So, it was doubtless intended by the patentees to be limited, for the claim speaks of the combination claimed as ‘substantially as described’; that is, described in the specifications.””
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.