Today in Supreme Court History: November 20

Osborne v. County of Adams, 106 U.S. 181 (decided November 20, 1882): a steam grist mill is not an “internal improvement” under state statute authorizing county to issue bonds for construction; statute deals only with railroads and related structures (not clear why there’s federal court jurisdiction here; the lower court seemed to say there wasn’t, yet decided the merits anyway, 7 F. 441)

O’Neil v. Northern Colorado Irrigation Co., 242 U.S. 20 (decided November 20, 1916): farmer objecting to a water utility plugging up his ditch in accordance with water priority decree in another district (where only district residents could be heard) was barred by four-year statute of limitations from contesting the decree, even though they didn’t come by to plug it up until 30 years later (seems unfair to me)

Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (decided November 20, 1972): a program to be used on a computer was not a patentable process because it was merely an abstract “principle”; the program here changed numbers from “binary coded” to “pure binary”, for example changing 53 from 5 then 3 (0101 0011) to 53 all in one bunch (110101)