“Thus there is a long felt need for a system which enables making telephone calls including local or toll calls conveniently, inexpensively and from any telephone. Thus if a party wants to make a call, be it a local call or a long distance national or international call, he should be able to accomplish the call from the nearest available telephone.”
“The need for appellate caution in reversing the judge’s evaluation of the facts is based upon much more solid grounds than professional courtesy. It is because specific findings of fact, even by the most meticulous judge, are inherently an incomplete statement of the impression which was made upon him by the primary evidence. His expressed findings are always surrounded by a penumbra of imprecision as to emphasis, relative weight, minor qualification and nuance (as Renan said, la vérité est dans la nuance), of which time and language do not permit exact expression, but which may play an important part in the judge’s overall evaluation. It would in my view be wrong to treat Benmax as authorising or requiring an appellate court to undertake a de novo evaluation of the facts in all cases in which no question of the credibility of witnesses is involved. When the application of a legal standard such as negligence or obviousness involves no question of principle but is simply a matter of degree, an appellate court should be very cautious in differing from the judge’s evaluation.”