Hoffer v. Microsoft Corp.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 federal appellate · 6 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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The district court stated that it was powerless to correct the error. We do not agree that such correction exceeds the judicial power. Absent evidence of culpability or intent to deceive by delaying formal correction, a patent should not be invalidated based on an obvious administrative error. The defendants did not state that they were prejudiced, or even confused, by the error. The district court held that it has no authority to correct or ignore even a typographical error in a patent. That is inaccurate. When a harmless error in a patent is not subject to reasonable debate, it can be corrected by the court, as for other legal documents. See Novo Indus., L.P. v. Micro Molds Corp., 350 F.3d 1348, 1356-57 (Fed.Cir.2003). Here the error was apparent from the face of the patent, and that view is not contradicted by the prosecution history. We conclude that claim 22 was improperly invalidated.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rothschild Trust Holdings, LLC v. Citrix Systems, Inc.

2. “[W]hen [a] 'whereby' [or 'wherein'] clause states a condition that is material to patentability, it cannot be ignored in order to change the substance of the invention.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Allergan Sales, LLC v. Sandoz, Inc.

3. “is not given weight when it simply expresses the intended result of a process step positively recited.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Allergan Sales, LLC v. Sandoz, Inc.