Bischoff v. Wethered’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

41 federal appellate · 1 district · 10 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 113 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The specifications of patents for inventions are documents of a peculiar kind. They profess to describe mechanisms and complicated machinery, chemical compositions, and other manufactured products, which have their existence in pais, outside of the documents themselves, and which are commonly described by terms of the art or mystery to which they respectively belong: and these descriptions and terms of art often require peculiar knowledge and education to understand them aright, and slight verbal variations, scarcely not ieeable to a common reader, would be detected by an expert in the art as indicating an important variation in an invention. Indeed, the whole subject-matter of a patent is an embodied conception outside of the patent itself, which, to the eyes of those expert in the art, stands out in clear, distinct relief, while it is often unperceived or but dimly perceived, by the uninitiated. This outward embodiment of the terms contained in the patent is the thing invented, and is to be properly sought, like the explanation of all latent ambiguities arising from the description of external things, by evidence in pais.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Brush Electric Co. v. Julien Electric Co. · Heide v. Panoulias

2. ““It is undoubtedly the common practice of the United States Circuit Court's, in actions at law, on questions, of priority of invention, where a patent under consideration is attempted to be invalidated by a prior patent, to take the evidence of experts as to the nature of the various mechanisms or manufactures described in the different patents produced, and as to the identity or diversity between them, and to submit’ all the evidence to the jury under general instructions as to the rules by which they are to consider the evidence. A case may sometimes be so clear that the court may feel no need of an expert to explain the terms of' the art or the descriptions contained in the respective patents, and may therefore feel authorized to leave the question of identity to the jury under such general instruction as the nature of the docu- mente seems to require. But in all such cases the question would still be treated as a question of fact for the jury and not as a question of law for the court. Such we think has been the prevailing rule in this country, and we see no sufficient reason for changing it.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc. · Heide v. Panoulias

3. ““As to the first point raised, to wit, the effect of the proceedings in the Common Pleas at Westminster Hall, it is enough to say that it was wholly without jurisdiction of the person, and whatever validity it may have in England, by virtue of the statute law, against property of the defendant there situate, it can have no validity here, even of a prima facie character. It is simply null.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hilton v. Guyot · Murray v. Strong