Smart v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘The opinion of the court was not the subject of exception or assignment of error. The reasons given in the opinion for the judgment of the court might be wrong, and still its judgment right. It is what the court did, and not what it said, which is subject to exception and review. We, therefore, in the present case, are concerned only with the question as to whether the trial court erred in dismissing plaintiffs’ bill of complaint, and not with its reasons for so doing, except as those reasons may throw light upon the question to be decided.’ ””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. E. R. Squibb & Sons v. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works · Jones v. Futrall

2. ““Except where form is of the essence of the invention, it has but little weight in the decision of such an issue; the correct rule being that, in determining the question of infringement, the court or jury, as the case may be, are not to judge about similarities or differences by the names of things, but are to look at the machines or their several devices or elements in the light of what they do, or what office or function they perform, and how they perform it, and to find that one thing is substantially the same as another, if it performs substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain the same result, always bearing in mind that devices in a patented machine are different in, the sense of the patent law when they perform different functions or in a different way, or produce a substantially different result. Nor is it safe to give much heed to the fact that the corresponding device in two machines organized to accomplish the same result is different in shape or form the one from the other, as it is necessary in every such investigation to look at the mode of operation or the way the device works, and at the result, as well as at the means by which the result is attained. Inquiries of this kind are often attended with difficulty; but if special attention is given to such portions of a given device as really does the work, so as not to give undue importance to other parts of the same which are only used as a convenient mode of constructing the entire d”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Daniel O'Donnell, Inc. v. Riscal Mfg. Co.