Gillette Company v. Sc Johnson & Son Inc’s Empirical Analysis
919 F.2d 720 · 1990
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 23 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently September 2017 · most notably Monarch Knitting Machinery Corp. v. Sulzer Morat GmbH (1998), Mendenhall Cmi v. Cedarapids Inc (1993)
3 federal appellate · 23 district · 1 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.
Relationships
Applies 35 U.S.C. § 103
Relies on Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City Calmar Inc · Vandygriff v. Phillips · Hannahville Indian Community v. United States · Hildebrand v. Social Security Administration · Marathon Oil Co. v. United States
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a general disclosure may pique the scientist’s curiosity, such that further investigation might be done as a result of the disclosure, but the disclosure itself does not contain a sufficient teaching of how to obtain the desired result, or that the claimed result would be obtained if certain directions were pursued.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is true that [a claimed invention may] consist[ ] of a combination of old elements so arranged as to perform certain related functions. It is immaterial to the issue, however, that all of the elements were old in other contexts. What must be found obvious to defeat the patent is the claimed combination.”
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.