patent law A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

, the Cripps question is: :"Was it for all practical purpose obvious to any skilled chemist in the state of chemical knowledge existing at the date of the patent which consists of the chemical literature available (a selection of which appears in the Particulars of Objections) and his general chemical knowledge, that he could manufacture valuable therapeutic agents by making the higher alkyl resorcinols; ... ?" It was posed in the 1920s by

Stafford Cripps Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat. A wealthy lawyer by background, Cripps first entered Parliament at a 1931 Bristol East by-election ...

in a British

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

case about n-hexyl

resorcinol Resorcinol (or resorcin) is a phenolic compound. It is an organic compound with the formula C6H4(OH)2. It is one of three isomeric benzenediols, the 1,3-isomer (or ''meta- (chemistry), meta''-isomer). Resorcinol crystallizes from benzene as co ...

, Sharp & Dohme Inc v Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd and approved by the

Master of the Rolls The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Court of Appeal (England and Wales)#Civil Division, Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales ...

Lord Hanworth in the Court of Appeal's judgment. If the answer was yes the patent was invalid for lack of inventive step or obviousness (or, in the terminology used at the time, want of subject matter). Referred to later as the Cripps question, this way of formulating the issue of inventive step in

English law English law is the common law list of national legal systems, legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly English criminal law, criminal law and Civil law (common law), civil law, each branch having its own Courts of England and Wales, ...

was deployed for many years thereafter. The Cripps question was noted by Lord Reid in the House of Lords in Technograph Printed Circuits v Mills & Rockley, 972Reports of Patent Cases 346 a case about a

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...

References

{{reflist United Kingdom patent law