inventor
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 74 U.S. 583 - Agawam Company v. Jordan · 1868Most cited · 228 citing opinions
Whoever first perfects a machine is entitled to the patent, and is the real inventor, although others may have previously had the idea and made some experiments towards putting it in practice. He is the inventor and is entitled to the patent who first brought the machine to perfection and made it capable of useful operation.
How often courts cite the case defining “inventor”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “inventor” — 228 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.