Jenkins Petroleum Process Co. v. Sinclair Refining Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 2 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “. At the outset the question arises as to construction of contract m respect of the source of information chargeable to the defendant and the time m ^ w uch it must have been received. Strictly construed the contract would be hrmted to information gained by experimentation. If that a one is covered by the contract, there could scarcely be any recovery because no experiments were ever made or witnessed by the defendant’s people after they received the still. However, I prefer to give more effect to the words ‘familiarizing themselves with the Jenkins apparatus and process’. And I rule that any information gained by defendant’s engineers and experts while so familiarizing themselves under the opportunity given them under the contract and as a result thereof is proper to be shown in support of the plaintiff’s contention. The defend-ant claims that disclosures made by the plaintiff to the defendant before the date °f the contract, that is, before October 2> 1916> cannot he considered as having been made under the contract; and that any disclosures made by plaintiff to defendant in the course of the negotiations baving ¿o do with the license or sale agreement were wholly unrelated to the contract and that, therefore, no improvements made by defendant as the result of its familiarity with the plaintiff’s process gained from such disclosures are covered by the contract. eqf the Qnl information given the de_ fendant by the Iaint¡ff and the Qnl in. formation obtained by the defe”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sinclair Refining Co. v. Jenkins Petroleum Process Co.

2. ““While I think that a narrow construction of the contract confining the improvements to such as were developed by experts while making the contemplated experiments with the machine (which were never made) may be justified, I prefer to further consider the status of the parties under a broader construction which gives more weight to the words 'familiarizing themselves with the Jenkins apparatus and process,’ especially as the plaintiff claims that the defendant’s agents, artfully and designedly gained the confidence of the Jenkins people, extracted all their information and used it as the basis of the Isom patent. “Taking the broader construction of the contract it would embrace information concerning the Jenkins Process imparted in any way by the Jenkins people to the defendant’s experts, and it appears from the evidence that much information was given by way of plans, specifications, and descriptions, and without doubt the defendant’s experts in this and other ways 'familiarized themselves with the Jenkins apparatus and process’ as much as possible. I do not, however, find from the evidence that there was any fraudulent intent in so doing, and much of the descriptive information acquired by the defendant’s people was not received by them exclusively, but, like the description in the plaintiff’s prospectus, shared with the public or with others.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jenkins Petroleum Process Co. v. Sinclair Refining Co.