Agawam Company v. Jordan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

53 federal appellate · 41 district · 11 state decisions

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

1. ““No one is entitled to a patent for that which he did not invent unless he can show a legal title to the same from the inventor or by operation of law; but where a person has discovered an improved principle in a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, and employs other persons to assist him in carrying out that principle, and they, in the course of experiments arising from that employment, make valuable discoveries ancillary to the plan and preconceived design of the employer, such suggested improvements are in general to be regarded as the property of the party who discovered the original improved principle, and may be embodied in his patent as a part of his invention. ****** “Persons employed, as much as employers, are entitled to their own independent inventions, but where the employer has conceived the plan of an invention and is engaged in experiments to perfect it, no suggestions from an employee, not amounting to a new method or arrangement, which, in itself is a complete invention, is sufficient to deprive the .employer of the exclusive property in the perfected improvement. * * * * * * “Guided by these well-established principles, the first inquiry is, what was actually done by the person who, as alleged by the respondents, was the real inventor of what is described in the reissued letters patent? They do not pretend that he invented or even suggested the entire invention, nor all of the several elements embraced in any one of the separate combinations, as e”

   12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Miller v. Nemmer · Fritz v. Hawn

2. ““The settled rule of law Is that whoever first perfects a machine is entitled to the patent and is the real inventor, although others may have previously had the idea and made some experiments towards putting it in practice. He is the inventor and is entitled to the patent who first brought the machine to perfection and made it capable of useful operation.””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Polye v. Uhl · Christie v. Seybold

3. ““ * * * common justice would forbid that any partial aid rendered under such circumstances, during the progress of experiments in perfecting the improvement, should enable the person rendering the aid to appropriate to himself the entire result of the ingenuity and toil of the originator, or put it in the power of any subsequent infringer to defeat the patent under the plea that the invention was made by the assistant and not by the originator of the plan.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Polye v. Uhl · Ethicon, Inc. v. United States Surgical Corp.