Common law (also known as case law or precedent) is law developed by judges, courts, and similar tribunals, stated in decisions that nominally decide individual cases but that in addition have precedential effect on future cases. common law system is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law, so that consistent principles applied to similar facts yield similar outcomes.
I ran into an issue with a printer cable, IEEE1284, that was over 6 feet, and it would not work on an OS/2 operating system. The docs for OS/2 stated that 6 feet was the maximum length the printer cable could be for a parallel port connection.
1 This unique cable allows you to attach your computer to any parallel printer device thru the USB port and get faster printing results.  Plug & Play, Connect a parallel printer to USB port, Compatible with Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP ,Supports virtually any standard or IEEE 1284 parallel printer.