Hutter v. Broome’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 3 district ·

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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A careful Inspection, however, of the design patent and of the exhibits of the defendant’s stopper, convinces me that these differences, whether between the drawing of the design in the patent and complainant’s actual structure or between either of those and defendant’s structure, are too minute and unimportant to overcome the charge of infringement. The design of the patent and the alleged imitation must be viewed as wrholes, and judged by the impression made upon the eye of an intelligent observer not unaccustomed to observe the same. If to such an eye, for instance, that of a dealer In the. articles in question, or one interested commercially in their use, the appearance of the two articles is so similar as that one could readily he mistaken for the other, ground for alleging infringement may be said to exist. And this is so notwithstanding that real, but minute, differences of outline, not affecting the general contour and form as apparent to the ordinary observer, may have been discovered by expert examiners. The testimony of several witnesses, accustomed to handle such goods, establishes such substantial similarity between the design of complainant’s stopper as protected by his patent, and that of defendant’s stopper, as to justify and support the charge of infringement.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Macbeth-Evans Glass Co. v. Rosenbaum Co.