The story
Posed in the 1920s by Stafford Cripps in a British patent case about n-hexyl resorcinol, Sharp & Dohme Inc v Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Cripps question
Today it means: A legal test as to whether an invention is obvious, based on whether a skilled person with existing knowledge could have invented it as a matter of routine. Full definition →