Miller v. Kelley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““This doctrine the Commissioner has cited as applicable in the present ease; and he adds: “ ‘No sufficient proof has been presented in the present ease to overcome the natural presumption from the relations of the parties; but, on the contrary, the evidence as a whole tends to support that presumption.’ “We think that this conclusion is fully warranted by the record, and that the doctrine announced is a fair and just exposition of the law, and is decisive of this case. “We do not mean, of course, to be understood as holding or sanctioning the idea that the employee’s intelligence is all for the time being given over to the employer, and that the employee retains no independent power of invention. On the contrary, the employee is to be protected from the rapacity of the employer, as much as the employer from the dishonesty of the employee; and if the employee makes an invention wholly independent of the employer, it is the law that the invention belongs to him who actually makes it, and that it does not inure to the benefit of the employer. What we hold is that when in the course of experiment by an employer with an invention a device is suggested for its improvement which in itself would reach the dignity of independent invention, and a dispute arises between employer and employee as to its conception, the presumption is justly in favor of the employer, and it is incumbent on the employee to overcome that presumption by ' satisfactory proof.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. De Forest v. Owens