Thompson v. Boisselier’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

131 federal appellate · 50 district · 3 state decisions

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

1. “[t]he beneficiary [of a patent] must be an inventor and he must have made a discovery.... [I]t is not enough that a thing shall be new, in the sense that in the shape or form in which it is produced shall not have been before known, and that it shall be useful, but it must, under the constitution and the statute, amount to an invention or discovery.”

   10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gardner v. Herz · Hill v. Wooster

2. ““The process of development in manufactures creates a constant demand for new appliances, which the skill of ordinary head workmen and engineers is generally adequate to devise, and which, indeed, are the natural and proper outgrowth of such development. Each step forward prepares the way for the next, and each is usually taken by spontaneous trials and attempts in a hundred different places. To grant to a single party a monopoly of every slight advance made, except where the exercise of invention, somewhat above ordinary mechanical or engineering skill, is distinctly shown, is unjust in principle and injurious in its consequences. “The design of the patent laws is to reward those who make, some substantial discovery or invention, which adds to' our knowledge and makes a step in advance in the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling de vice, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Sueh an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. William Schwarzwaelder & Co. v. City of Detroit · City of St. Louis v. Prendergast

3. ““To refer only to some more recent cases, adjudged since these suits were decided below, this principle was applied in Vinton v. Hamilton, 104 11. Si. 485 [20 1,. Ed. 8071, where, a cupola-furnace being old. and a cinder-notch being old. and the use of a cinder-notch to draw off cinders from a blast-furnace being old, and the cinder-notch, in drawing off the cinder from a cupola-furnace, performing the same function as in the blast-furnace, it was held that the application of the cinder-notch to the cupola-furnace would occur to any practical man, and that there was nothing patentable in such application. “In Hall v. Macncale, 107 U. S. 90 |2 Hup. On. 73, 27 L. Ed. 367 ], a cored conical bolt, in a safe, with a screw-thread on it, having existed before, and also a solid conical bolt, it was held to be no invention to add the screw-thread to the solid conical bolt. “Jn Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 IT. S. 192, 200 [ 2 Sup. Ct. 225 , 27 11. Ed. 438], it was said that it is not the object of the patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator, in the ordinary progress of manufactures ; and this doctrine was applied in Slawson v. Grand Street Railroad Co., 107 U. S. 649 [ 2 Sup. Ct. 003 , 27 L. Ed. 576 ]; in King v. Gallum, 109 U. S. 99 [ 3 Sup. Ct. 85 , 27 L. Ed. 870 ]; in Double-Feinted Tack Co. v. Two Rivers Manufacturing Co.. 109 U. S. 117 [ 3 Sup. Ct. 103 , 27 L. Ed. 877 ]; in Estey v.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Tiffany v. Paper Products Co.