Beach v. Inman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The elements of the first claim are the opposing clamping dies, the feeding mechanism, and the pasting mechanism. The second claim omits the pasting mechanism, and adds the cutting mechanism. The third claim is substantially a combination of all the elements of the first and second. The first three claims are broad ones, covering the particular combinations referred to, without any restriction to the details of mechanical construction; and defendants concede that, if these claims are to be sustained broadly as they are expressed, they are infringed. As to this first set, therefore, the only question is whether, in view of the state of the art, Beach was entitled to appropriate as broad a combination as he has set forth in his first three claims, which cover every device for affixing stay strips to the outside of box corners, where the operation is performed by the combined action of a feeding mechanism, a cutting mechanism, and a pasting mechanism, in combination with any opposing clamping dies whose faces diverge. The circuit court sustained these broad claims, and we concur in this decision. It is hardly necessary to add anything to the elaborate discussion of this part of the case, which will be found in the opinion of the learned judge who heard it in the circuit court. The patentee indisputably made a machine which did work that theretofore was always done by hand. * * * Certainly, the state of the art exhibits a necessary part of the work of box making as done by hand,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Beach v. Hobbs