Merrill v. Yeomans’s Empirical Analysis
94 U.S. 568 · 1876
Citation profile
113 federal appellate · 46 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 322 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably MARKMAN Et Al. v. WESTVIEW INSTRUMENTS, INC., Et Al. (1996), Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. (1950)
113 federal appellate · 46 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 322 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The growth of the patent system in the last quarter of a century in this country has reached a stage in its progress where the variety and magnitude of the interests involved require accuracy, precision, and care in the preparation of all the papers on which the patent is founded. * * * The developed and improved condition of the patent law, and of the principles which govern the exclusive rights conferred by it, leave no excuse for ambiguous language or vague descriptions. The public should not be deprived of rights supposed to belong to it, without being clearly told what it is that limits these rights. * * * It seems to us that nothing can be more just and fair, both to the patentee and to the public, than that the former should understand, and correctly describe, just what he has invented, and for what he claims a patent.””
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Sus · Eisenstein v. Fibiger“This distinct and formal claim is, therefore, of primary importance, in the effort to ascertain precisely what it is that is patented.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“by the well-settled rules of construing all instruments, some importance must be attached to them; and, if they are to be regarded at all, they must either refer to the process of making the oils for which the applicant is claiming a patent, or they are intended to limit his claim for a patent for the product to that product only, when produced by treating the oils in the manner before described.”
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.