Associated Folding Box Co. v. Levkoff’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 federal appellate · 10 district · 1 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The old elements which he combined each performed its own function in the combination, and their performance in concert was no more than the sum of their performances individually. Nor do we think that any extraordinary insight or unusual perspicacity was required to conceive of his combination of old elements, and certainly no remarkable talent was required to integrate the old elements in a single structure. His new and useful result was not a radically different tray, although it may have been, and probably was, a better one. We look, therefore, to see whether the improvement Levkoff wrought was an unusual or surprising consequence of the unification of the old elements he accomplished, and we are constrained to say that it was not. That is to say, scrutinizing the claim in the light of the severe test applicable now, we are forced to the view that while Levkoff made an improvement, his improvement did not amount to a sufficiently radical innovation to warrant a finding of invention.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Brandano v. Handman

2. ““The specific problem to which Levkoff addressed himself, that of providing stiff ends for a collapsible box or tray which could be cheaply stamped out of a single sheet of cardboard and quickly erected, was not particularly old, and it would not seem to be especially baffling.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Winchester Carton Corp. v. Standard Box Co.