Hotchkiss v. Greenwood
1851 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. (11 How.) 248 (1851), was a United States Supreme Court decision credited with introducing into United States patent law the concept of non-obviousness as a patentability requirement,[1] as well as stating the applicable legal standard for determining its presence or absence in a claimed invention.
Hotchkiss v. Greenwood | |
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Argued February 5–6, 1851 Decided February 19, 1851 | |
Full case name | Julia P. Hotchkiss, Executrix of John G. Hotchkiss, Deceased, John A. Davenport, and John W. Quincy, Plaintiffs in Error v. Miles Greenwood and Thomas Wood, Partners in Trade Under the Name of M. Greenwood & Co. |
Citations | 52 U.S. 248 (more) |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Nelson, joined by Taney, McLean, Wayne, Catron, McKinley, Daniel, Grier |
Dissent | Woodbury |
The test of the Hotchkiss case may be described as: whether, at the time the claimed invention was made, the differences between the features of the claimed invention and the things that persons skilled in the relevant art already knew were such that it would have been within the level of skill of an ordinary artisan in that art to combine those known features to make the claimed invention.[2]
More specifically, as stated in the Hotchkiss opinion, itself:
Unless more ingenuity and skill . . . were required . . . than were possessed by an ordinary mechanic acquainted with the business, there was an absence of that degree of skill and ingenuity which constitute essential elements of every invention. In other words, the improvement is the work of the skillful mechanic, not that of the inventor.[3]