Albright v. Langfeld’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 4 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is always possible, where an inventor has made an improvement upon a familiar article of simple mechanism, and the improvement only involves changes and additions which afterwards seem simple and unimportant, to allege want of invention, or the result only that which the ordinary mechanic skilled in that particular art could have seen; yet where the difficulties and objections overcome by this improvement, however slight, have been endured by the public for a long time, and numerous efforts have been made to overcome them, without complete success, when a patent is granted for an improvement in that particular article which does overcome such former difficulties and objections, and it has immediately gone into use, the courts have, as a rule, found in favor of the inventor, and sustained the patent.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Daylight Glass Mfg. Co. v. American Prismatic Light Co.

2. ““When the Patent Office has granted a patent to an inventor, the court should not be ready to adopt a narrow or astute construction fatal to the grant, and, in cases where there is any doubt, the test of practical success is always persuasive evidence of novelty, and has great weight in solving the question favorable to the invention."”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Beryle v. San Francisco Cornice Co.