United States patent law Under United States law, a patent is a right granted to the inventor of a (1) process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, (2) that is new, useful, and non-obvious. A patent is the right to exclude others, for a limit ...

, the flash of genius doctrine was a test for

patentability Within the context of a national or multilateral body of law, an invention is patentable if it meets the relevant legal conditions to be granted a patent. By extension, patentability also refers to the substantive conditions that must be met fo ...

used by the

United States Federal Courts The federal judiciary of the United States is one of the three branches of the federal government of the United States organized under the Constitution of the United States, United States Constitution and Law of the United States, laws of the fed ...

for just over a decade, beginning circa 1940.

Origin

The doctrine was formalized by the Supreme Court's opinion in ''Cuno Engineering v. Automatic Devices'' (1941), which held that the inventive act had to come into the mind of an

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

in a "flash of genius" and not as a result of tinkering: "The new device, however useful it may be, must reveal the ''flash of creative genius'', not merely the skill of the calling. If it fails, it has not established its right to a private grant on the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

Overturned

The test was eventually rejected by

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

in its 1952 revision of the patent statute, now codified in Title 35 of the United States Code. Section 103 was amended to state the new standard of ''non-obviousness'': "Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made." The

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

acknowledged this new language in its landmark opinion on obviousness, '' Graham v. John Deere Co.'' (1966), noting that the language in ''Cuno'' establishing the doctrine had never been intended to create a new standard in the first instance.''Id.'' at fn. 7

Origin

Overturned

See also

References

Further reading