Gill v. Wells’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

46 federal appellate · 16 district · 1 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 169 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Equivalents may be claimed by a patentee of an invention consisting of a combination of old elements or Ingredients, as well as of any other valid patented improvement, provided the arrangement of the parts composing the invention is new, and will produce a new and useful result. Such a patentee may doubtless invoke the doctrine of equivalents as against an infringer of the patent; but the term ‘equivalent,’ as applied to such an invention, is special In its signification, and somewhat different from what is meant when the term is applied to an invention consisting of a new device or an entirely new machine. Pressure in a machine may be produced by a spring or by a weight; and, where that is so, the one is a mechanical equivalent of the other. Cases arise, also, where a rod and an endless chain will produce the same effect in a machine; and, where that is so, the constructor in operating tinder the patent may substitute the'one for the other, and still claim the protection which the pa lent confers. Exactly the same function in certain cases may be accomplished by a lever or by a screw; and, where that is so, the substitution of tiie one for the other cannot be regarded as invention. Patentees of an invention consisting merely of a combination of old ingredients are entitled to equivalents, by which is meant that the patent in respect to each of the respective ingredients comprising the invention covers every other ingredient which, in the same arrangement of the parts, will”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Westinghouse Electric & Mfg. Co. v. Condit Electrical Mfg. Co. · American Steel & Wire Co. of New Jersey v. Denning Wire & Fence Co.

2. ““Cases arise where a< patentee, having invented a new and useful combination consisting of several ingredients which in combination compose an organized machine, also claims to have invented new and useful combinations of fewer numbers of the ingredients, and in such eases the law is well settled that if the several combinations are new and useful, and will severally produce new and useful results, the inventor is entitled to a patent for the several combinations, provided that he complies with the requirement of the Patent Act and files in the Patent Office a written description of each of the alleged new and useful combinations, and of the manner of making, constructing, and using the same. “He may give the description of the several combinations in one specification, and in that event he can secure the full benefit of the exclusive right to each of the several inventions by separate claims referring back to the'description in the specification; and if by inadvertence, accident, or mistake, he should fail to claim any one of the described combinations, he may surrender the‘original patent and have a reissue not only for the combination or combinations claimed in the original, but for any which were so omitted in the claims of the original patent.” In the case at bar, claim 12 is for a combination containing specifically all of the elements of claims 13 and 14. Claims 13 and 14 are for a combination of elements resulting in alloys. They are essentially subeom-binations of”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Hawkins

3. ““Whether one device is or is not an equivalent for another is usually a question of fact, and often becomes a difficult issue to decide. * * * Questions of the kind usually arise in comparing the machine of the defendant in a suit for infringement with that of the plaintiff, and the rule is that if the defendant omits entirely one of the ingredients of the plaintiff’s combination, without substituting any other, he does not infringe, and if he substitutes another in the place of the one omitted, which is new or which performs a substantially different function, or even if it is old, but was not known at the date of the plaintiff’s patent as a proper substitute for the omitted ingredient, he does not infringe. * * * Alterations * * * in a combination, which are merely formal, do not constitute a defense to the charge of infringement, as the inventor of a new and useful combination of old ingredients is as much entitled to claim equivalents as any other class of inventors; but they cannot suppress subsequent improvements which are substantially different from their inventions, whether the new improvement consists in a new combination of the same ingredients, or of some newly discovered ingredient, or even of some old ingredient performing some new function not known at the date of the letters patent as a proper substitute for the ingredient withdrawn.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. American Sulphite Pulp Co. v. Hinckley Fibre Co.