Dalton v. Jennings’s Empirical Analysis
93 U.S. 271 · 1876
Citation profile
2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1953
2 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If the netting patented by appellant bad been produced by him for the first time, it would be difficult to find in it, or in the process by which it is made, anything deserving the name of invention, within the meaning of the patent law. If the spaces between the threads of the netting were too large, thereby permitting the escape of the hair, there is nothing new in the idea that making them smaller would remedy the evil. If the size of the threads then in use was too large for beauty, neither discovery nor invention were necessary to reduce it. There is nothing new in the number of these threads, in their size, nor in the manner in which they are crossed and connected. Where, then, is the invention? Is it in the fact that some of the threads are coarser and some of finer size? This can hardly be invention, since gauze and netting have been made with threads or cords of unequal size time out of mind, and with varying and equal or unequal spaces between them. * * * It is impossible to call the hair net or netting for which the appellant claims a patent a new invention, or any invention of his.””
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.