Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be for government tax claim; for person claiming patent or copyright infringement; for the plaintiff alleging the injury; for economic underdog if one party is clearly an underdog in comparison to the other, neither party is clearly an economic underdog; in cases pitting an individual against a business, the individual is presumed to be the economic underdog unless there is a clear indication in the opinion to the contrary; for debtor or bankrupt; for government or private party raising claim of violation of antitrust laws, or party opposing merger; for the economic underdog in private conflict over securities; for individual claiming a benefit from government; for government in disputes over government contracts and government seizure of property; for government regulation in government regulation of business; for greater protection of the environment or greater consumer protection (even if anti-government); for the injured party in admiralty - personal injury; for economic underdog in admiralty and miscellaneous economic cases. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.
In the court below the Nagel-Clmse Manufacturing Company, hereafter called plaintiff, by its bill charged the Champion Lighting Company, hereafter called defendant, with infringement of patent No. 1,800,665, granted April 14, 1931, to, Edward Schultz, for a tobacco receptacle. The bill also charged infringement of design patent No. 85,117 for said receptacle, granted September 15, 1931, to same patentee.
On final hearing, the court held neither patent infringed and dismissed the bill. In so doing the court committed no error and its opinion really leaves nothing to be said save by way of repetition. In view of the previous art, the claims of the patent are narrow and are confined to the particular structure therein described. The essential, effective element in op ening and closing the plaintiff’s trap door is the turned tongue, which is part of the trap door itself. As this mechanism is not found in defendant’s structure, infringement does not follow.
As to the design patent, the distinctive characteristics of the design are, first, a slender, fluted supporting column; and, second, the ornamental handles on the Grecian vase. The test of infringement is whether one who had seen the plaintiff’s receptacle and desired to buy another, would be misled by the defendant’s structure into imagining he was purchasing the plaintiff’s design structure. Clearly, he would not. The defendant’s design does not have plaintiff’s slender supporting column, nor the walls of Troy which characterize and individualize the plaintiff’s structure and design for the supporting base of the same general kind. While it may be that the defendant got the idea of a trap door tobacco ash receptacle from the plaintiff, nevertheless the fact remains that there is no possibility of confounding the two. We accordingly affirm the decree below.

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: A