Comptograph Co. v. Burroughs Adding Mach. Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 2 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““There can be no reasonable doubt that defendant by its counsel assumed a hostile position to complainant in said test suit before the Court of Appeals. It asserted various hostile positions, some of which were not insisted on by the then defendant. It set op title in itself to the Pike patent, No. 595.804, an alleged infringer of the Felt patent in suit. It asserted the Felt patent to be an abandoned experiment. It substantially sided with the original defendant. It charged various acts calculated to invalidate the patent in suit, such as delay, abandonment, the Pike patent as an anticipation. Felt’s misrepresentation to the Patent Office — all this in face of the velf-luiown doctrine that a licensee may not be heard to contest the validity of his licensor’s patent. ‘A licensor,’ says our Court of Appeals in Indiana Mfg. Company v. J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, 154 Fed. 365 [ 83 C. C. A. 343 ], ‘has the right * * * to appellee's (the licensee's) silence respecting the validity and prima facie scope el’ the patent.’ It further appears that it was to defendant’s advantage to have the patent declared invalid, since large payments were thereby avoided. Complainant insists that the defendant’s course in the former case amounted to both a breach and repudiation of the license contract; that defendant, after said decision, proceeded to ally itself with another infringer and entered upon other alleged infringements; that it has by its silence apparently acquiesced in the ann”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. American Graphophone Co. v. Victor Talking Mach. Co.

2. ““It is a familiar rule that a party may not enter into a contract to do or pay something upon the happening of a certain event, and then proceed to make the happening of the condition impossible, and such a course is held to be ground for the cancellation of a contract; but, in the absence of a special condition of the contract to that effect, a licensor cannot by his own act revoke and terminate a license contract. He may file his bill for a rescission, but cannot terminate it by his own declaration, especially when some part of it has been performed. ‘The law does not arm one party to a contract,’ says Judge Gray in Standard Dental Mfg. Co. v. National Tooth Co. (C. C.) 95 Fed. 291 , ‘with the power to determine in his own favor a condition of this kind, and thus produce for the other party to the contract all the disabilities and consequences that would follow a forfeiture legally ascertained and declared. Even where the contract provides that the failure to pay shall render it null and void, the defendant has a right to be heard as to the facts upon which such annulment is made to depend. Forfeitures are not favored in equity, and the best-considered decisions hold that even licenses containing express stipulations for their forfeitures are not, ipso facto, forfeited upon conditions broken, but remain operative and pleadable until rescinded by a court of equity.’ “In Hartell v. Tilghman, 99 U. S. 547 , 25 L. Ed. 357 , the court says: ‘ * * * We do not agree that either pa”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. American Graphophone Co. v. Victor Talking Mach. Co.