Heidbrink v. McKesson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““With this statement of the situation, we come to his two claims of 1,265,910. We are compelled to think that they are invalid because functional. They are apparently most deliberately and skillfully drafted to cover any means which any one ever may discover of producing the result; that is, to accomplish the one thing while avoiding the other. We think they are clearly to be condemned under the rule stated in O’Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62 , 112, 14 L.Ed. 601 , Risdon v. Medart, 158 U.S. 68 , 77, 15 S.Ct. 745 , 39 L.Ed. 899 , and the many familiar cases applying the rule, and that they are not within the principle of the Telephone Cases, 126 U.S. 1 , 534, 8 S.Ct. 778 , 31 L.Ed. 863 . We do not mean to say that a claim which in a very general way calls for means is necessarily functional and bad— quite the contrary (Davis Sewing Mach. Co. v. New Departure Mfg. Co. [C.C.A.6] 217 F. 775 , 782, 133 C.C.A. 505 ); nor would we hastily condemn for this reason, a claim which, by its functional quality, only became equivalent to that valid process claim which the inventor might have obtained through another form of his application; but a claim to a process which attempted to define the process only by its result, would be no less objectionable than is a corresponding claim to a machine.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Ferguson