In re Clark’s Empirical Analysis
97 F.2d 628 · 1938
Citation profile
3 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently March 2009
3 federal appellate ·
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
Relies on Linville v. Milberger · In re Einstein · Automatic Appliance Co. v. McNiece Motor Co. · In re Deakins · Linville v. Milberger
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““As we understand it, under the patent law and the prevailing Patent Office practice, an inventor, where it is difficult to express his invention in the form of claims, has the right to, and ordinarily for his own protection does, express the same invention in more than one claim. If by so doing he more clearly defines his invention and does not by undue multiplicity obscure the same, he is acting within the rights granted and the duties required by the patent laws.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““While, according to strict rules of law, two distinct claims for the same substantial matter, differing only in nonessentials, cannot both be sustained, yet, out of regard to .the frailty of human methods of expression, and the variety of views among different legal judicial tribunals as to the construction of instruments of the character of letters patent, and conceding, also, the difficulty of always correctly defining what one’s invention really is, the practice has become settled to allow the same substantial invention to be stated in different ways, very much as the same cause of action, or the same offense intended to be covered by indictment, are permitted to be propounded in different counts, with a general verdict on all of them.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. In re Barnett““The law is well settled that the mere addition of the statement of the function of an element does not necessarily make that claim patentable over one in the prior art where the same structure is described without the functional element.” In re Clark, 1938, 97 F.2d 628, 631 , 25 C.C.P.A., Patents, 1317.”
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.