Werner v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Patents, however, are granted on structures rather than on ideas under our patent law, and the mere fact that an inventor is unable to foresee the possibilities of the structure that he devises does not detract from its force and effect as prior art. “Perhaps one of the most striking illustrations of this principle is found in the case of Radio Corporation of America v. Radio Engineering Laboratories, 293 U.S. 1, 14 , 54 S.Ct. 752 , 78 L.Ed. 1453 . That celebrated case involved the prolonged litigation between De Forest and Armstrong over the right to priority of invention of the so-called feed back radio circuit. The fact that De Forest’s work was earlier than Armstrong’s was not disputed. It was claimed, however, that De Forest’s work should not receive full weight because he did not realize what the circuit that he accidentally hit upon could be used for and practically laid it to one side. The Supreme Court held that this was immaterial and awarded the palm of victory to De Forest.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 274 F. Supp. 312 - Filmon Process Corp. v. Spellright Corp.