Beach v. Hobbs’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 6 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 20 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

2. ““So far as any proposition may lie frilly presented to tlie court of appeals in any circuit, and determined by it, resulting in a rule which is, and ought to be, of general application, especially when it involves federal questions, a condition of adjudications which would defeat uniformity throughout the United States would clearly disappoint the contemplation of congress in establishing those tribunals. * * * A decision of the circuit court of appeals in any circuit, so long as It remains unappealed from, and so long as the supreme court has not Issued its writ of certiorari to re-examine it, must be regarded as having more effect than that ordinarily given to even the highest siaie tribunals. or to any court: of merely concurrent jurisdiction, no matter how great its learning. There seems to he no method of maintaining the necessary uniformity of the law with reference to general questions, especially federal questions, unless 1he mature and solemn judgments of a circuit court of appeals in any circuit are accepted as authoritative declarations of the law, subject only to such criticisms on the score of oversight or evident mistake as would apply to a judgment of the circuit court of appeals in the particular circuit where the litigation then under determination may be ponding.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Aspinwall's Estate

3. ““Those considerations have a special importance as applied to a solemn and well-considered judgment oí any circuit court of appeals with reference to a patent for an invention issued by the United States, when the state of the proofs remains substantially the same, in view of the reluctance of tire supreme court to issue writs of certiorari in causes of this character, involving mainly questions of fact; otherwise such patents, although intended by statute to have effect throughout the whole country, would, for practical purposes, be territorially limited, and would be of effect only in portions thereof, and practically invalid in other portions. It is also to be borne in mind that there is no serious danger that the courts in any circuit, by following the decisions of the circuit court of appeals in other circuits, would perpetuate any seeming error, because of the power vested in the supreme court to rectify the sitme by issuing its writs of certiorari.” 82 Fed. 916 , 919.”

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