The exhausted combination doctrine, also referred to as the doctrine of the Lincoln Engineering case, is the doctrine of U.S. patent law that when an inventor invents a new, unobvious device and seeks to patent not merely the new device but also the combination of the new device with a known, conventional device with which the new device cooperates in the conventional and predictable way in which devices of those types have previously cooperated, the combination is unpatentable as an "exhausted combination" or "old combination". The doctrine is also termed the doctrine of the Lincoln Engineering case because the United States Supreme Court explained the doctrine in its decision in Lincoln Engineering Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp.
Read more about Exhausted Combination Doctrine: The Lincoln Engineering Decision, Is The Lincoln Engineering Doctrine Obsolete?, Exhausted Combinations and Nonstatutory Subject Matter, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words exhausted, combination and/or doctrine:
“You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach’d to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“But his Lordship [tells] ... us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Nor ... can I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)