Brown & Root, Inc. v. Jaques’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 1991
6 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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.
““The inventor of a useful device or article obviously has two courses open to him. He may, at his own risk, himself keep secret the principle or method by which his article is produced or manufactured, and sell his products to the public ; or he may obtain a patent on his invention. In the first instance his control of his product depends upon keeping it a trade secret. In the latter, though made public, his rights are protected under the patent laws, and are referable to such laws. Up to the time Jaques was granted a patent, his right to protection of his invention was a trade secret. As such he was undoubtedly entitled to protection by injunction against its use by any one who had obtained such secret by fraud or breach of a confidential relation. 14 R.C.L. 403; 32 C.J. 157. If, however, the manufactured article itself, when sold to the public, reveals or discloses the principle or combination of parts by which such article or machine is created or manufactured, the sale thereof to the public, or the placing of same in the hands of the public, in and of itself discloses and makes public the secret by which it is created or manufactured. In which event the sale of the article reveals the trade secret by which it is made. This was manifestly true of the saw in question. It was not such a device as would conceal the secret of its construction. On the contrary, when exposed to the public, it readily revealed the arrangement or combination of well-known mechanical parts by which”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.