Gillman v. Stern’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

27 federal appellate · 9 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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The defence is rather a scurvy one at best, and we are not inclined to lend it an auspicious ear in the case at bar. Of course, a person seeking a court’s aid may have so conducted himself that his case reeks too much for any court to entertain it (Keystone Driller Co. v. [General] Excavator Co., 290 U.S. 240 , 54 S.Ct. 146 , 78 L.Ed. 293 ) no matter from whom it learns the facts. But ordinarily that is not so; ordinarily he has merely made some venial misstatement which influences nobody; then the defence sits especially ill in the mouth of one who is himself an offender, and who seeks by recrimination to continue his invasion of the other’s rights, and to avoid restitution. Particularly in actions on patents it has become the favorite gambit of infringers; they pick over the patentee’s advertisements — often, it is true, not drawn with scrupulous nicety, as advertisements seldom are — and find, as they frequently can, departures from the untarnished truth. These ought not to give them their escape.” 114 F.2d at 32 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 228 F. Supp. 26 - Briggs v. M & J Diesel Locomotive Filter Corp.

2. ““Such a use is clearly not a ‘public’ one, and such an inventor is not a ‘first inventor.’ In Gayler v. Wilder, 10 How. 477, 481, 497 , 13 L.Ed. 504 , the question was whether the condition — which has always been in the statute — that the patentee must be the ‘first and original inventor’ was defeated by anyone who had earlier conceived the same invention, or only by one who had also in some way made public his results. A majority of the court held that only the second would defeat a patent on the ground that what had not in fact enriched the art, should not count; and the doctrine is now well fixed. Alexander Milburn Co. v. Davis-Bournonville Co., 270 U.S. 390 , 46 S.Ct. 324 , 70 L.Ed. 651 . Just as a secret use is not a ‘public use,’ so a secret inventor is not a ‘first inventor.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 275 F. Supp. 961 - Hughes Aircraft Co. v. General Instrument Corp.

3. ““Haas’ user was one where ‘the machine, process, and product were not well known to the employes in the plant,’ and where ‘efforts were made to conceal them from anyone who had a legitimate interest in understanding them,’ if by ‘legitimate interest’ one means something more than curiosity or mischief.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Magnetics, Inc. v. Arnold Engineering Co.