Bullard Co. v. Coe’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is not apparent that the witness wished his experiment to succeed. He had been employed by appellant company for nine years and there is nothing to suggest that he was not a loyal employee. We have not the slightest doubt of his honesty, but the fact remains that an interest in losing the game is a poor qualification for winning it. Theoretically a man may ‘try,’ as the witness tried, to achieve a result adverse to his own interest, but his effort is not likely to be very efficient. His lack of success may be evidence, but it would be strange to regard it as entirely conclusive evidence, that an equally competent man who desired success could not have achieved it. “In order to show that the appealed claims are inventive it was necessary for appellants to prove that Svenson (1) was not operative and (2) could not be made operative by slight changes within the skill of a competent mechanic or, in other words, without inventive genius. Crown Cork & Seal Co. v. Aluminum Stopper Co., 4 Cir., 108 F. 845, 849 ; Manhattan Book Casing Mach. Co. v. E. C. Fuller Co., D.C., 274 F. 964 , affirmed, 2 Cir., 204 F. 286 . The burden of proof was on appellants. Their engineer’s evidence would have supported a finding in their favor but we cannot say that it required such a finding. Decision turned upon balancing the more or less probable correctness of the engineer’s opinion against the probable ■correctness of the action of the Patent Office in granting Svenson’s patent and in denying the”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Douglas Aircraft Co. v. Weeks