Butler v. Steckel’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. ““It is true, I doubt not, that it required considerable mechanical skill to make a die which would cut out a bretzel from dough so as to imitate a handmade bretzel, because the hand-made bretzel is somewhat clumsily shaped, as the parts are bent, twisted, and laid upon each other; and it was undoubtedly a matter requiring some study, effort, and experiment to make the shape of the die correspond with the external formation of the bretzel. This, iiow-ever, seems to me not to involve invention, but mere mechanical skill. The cutter might be compelled to experiment some, — that is, cut several dies; but that is not invention. The proof also shows that a large number of persons, before these patentees, had attempted to make a machine which would cut bretzels, and considerable money and time seems to have been expended in efforts to produce such a machine; but the noticeable thing in regard to all these early efforts was the fact that most of those engaged in them were trying to draw out and twist the dough by machinery, rather than to cut or stamp dough from a flat sheet, while others were endeavoring to cut them with dies set in revolving cylinders; and as soon as the idea of cutting the dough from a flat sheet was conceived, the difficulty seems to have vanished, and success followed the effort, as the only change made was to adapt the old letter dies to the shape of a bretzel. ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Potts v. Creager