Smith v. Nichols’s Empirical Analysis
88 U.S. 112 · 1874
Citation profile
180 federal appellate · 74 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 443 later decisions (34 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2016 · most notably Corona Cord Tire Co. v. Dovan Chemical Corp. (1928), Dow Chemical Co. v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. (1945)
180 federal appellate · 74 district · 3 state decisions
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 443 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The mere carrying forward or more extended application of the original idea, involving a change only in form, proportions, or degree, and resulting in the doing of the same work in the same way and by substantially the same means — is not patentable, even though better results are secured.””
46 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ A mere carrying forward of an original conception patented, — a new and more extended application of it, — involving change only in form, proportions, or degree; tlie substitution of equivalents, doing tlie same thing as did the original invention, by substantially the same means, with better effects, — is not such an invention as will sustain a patent. It is the invention of what is new, and not the arrival at eomparative superiority or greater excellence in that which was already known, which the law protects as exclusive property, and which it secures by patent. ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Meritorious inventors are entitled to protection; but it is settled law that a mere carrying forward of an original patented conception, involving only change of form, proportions, or degree, or the substitution of equivalents, doing the same thing as the original invention by substantially the same means, is not such an invention as will sustain a patent, even though the changes of the kind may produce better results.”
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.