 Flash of genius

In United States patent law, the flash of genius doctrine was a test for patentability used by the United States Federal Courts for just over a decade, beginning circa 1940.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 in a "flash of genius" and not as a result of tinkering