Chaffee v. Hayward’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 5 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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Moreover, the present suit is for an infringement of a patent for an invention, the jurisdiction of the national courts over which depends upon the subject-matter, and not upon the parties; and, by statutes in force at the time of the passage of the acts of 1887 and 1888, the courts of the nation had original jurisdiction, ‘exclusive of the courts of the several states,’ of all cases arising under the patent right or copyright laws of the United States, without regard to the amount or value in dispute. Rev. St. § 629, cl. 9; Id. § 711, cl. 5. The section now in question, at the outset, spealrs only of so much of the civil jurisdiction of the circuit courts of the United States as is ‘concurrent with the courts of the several states,’ and as concerns cases in which the matter in dispute exceeds $2,000 in amount or value. The grant to the circuit courts of the United States, in this section, of jurisdiction over a class of cases described generally as ‘arising under the constitution and lawiS of the United States,’ does not affect the jurisdiction granted by earlier statutes to any court of the United States over specified cases of that class. If the clause of this section defining the district in which suit shall be brought is applicable to patent cases, the clause limiting the jurisdiction to matters of a certain amount or value must be held to be equally applicable, with the result that no court of the country, national or state, would have jurisdiction of patent suits invo”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Union Switch & Signal Co. v. Hall Signal Co.

2. ““It is insisted; however, for the plaintiff, that these rulings were had in cases arising where the jurisdiction depended on citizenship; whereas, here the suit is founded on an act of congress conferring jurisdiction on the circuit courts of the United States in' suits by inventors against-those who infringe their letters patent, including all cases, both at law and in equity, arising under the patent laws, without regard to citizenship of the parties or the amount in controversy, and therefore the eleventh section of the judiciary act. does not apply. * ® * It applies in its terms to all civil suits. It makes no exception, nor can the courts of justice make any. The judicial power extends to all cases in law and equity arising under the constitution and laws of the United States, and It is pursuant, to this clause of the constitution that the United States courts are vested witli power to execute the laws respecting inventors and patented inventions; but where suits are to be brought is left to general law, to wit, to the eleventh section of the judiciary act.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Donnelly v. United States Cordage Co.