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65 F. 99

Docket No. 5,829.

Pratt v. Wright

United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of New York · decided 1890-07-12

<p>Patents — Novelty—Infringement.</p>

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““The questions are fairly doubtful; and, that being so, it would be unseemly not to follow a decision which is entitled to the greatest respect, made by a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, and determining the title to the same property.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Minerals Separation North American Corp. v. Magma Copper Co.

Relies on Pratt v. Sencenbaugh · Pratt v. Lloyd

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1890-07-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently April 1941

3 federal appellate · 1 district ·

60189019001910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Patents — Novelty—Infringement.

¶2Hey & Wilkinson, for complainant.

¶3West & Bond, for defendants.

¶4WALLACE, Circuit Judge.

¶5It is plain enough in this case that neither the second nor the third claim of the patent in suit is invalid for want of novelty, and that the defendants infringe the second claim. The doubt is whether the second claim is not invalid as being for an invention not described or suggested in the original patent, and whether the defendants infringe the third claim. I am satisfied, however, after carefully examining the case, that I ought to follow the decision of the circuit court for the Eastern district of Pennsylvania1 in which it was adjudged that both claims were valid, and were infringed by devices substantially the same as those which are employed by the defendants. The record here, so far as it relates to the prior state of the art, does not differ materially from that in the Pennsylvania case. That case was heard by Judges McKennan and Butler, and the opinion shows that it was fully considered. The questions are fairly doubtful; and, that being so, it would be unseemly not to follow a decision which is entitled to the greatest respect, made by a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, and determining tiie title to the same property. A decree is therefore ordered for an injunction and an accounting as to both the second and third claims. ,

¶6See Pratt v. Sencenbaugh, 64 Fed. 779.

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