ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Doctrine of inherency

Alright kiddo, so let me explain to you what the doctrine of inherency means.

Imagine you have a toy car that can move by itself without anyone pushing it. That's called an inherent property of the car. In the same way, the doctrine of inherency says that if something has a certain property, it doesn't need anyone or anything else to give it that property.

Let's take an example. If you look at an apple, you can tell that it's red. That red color is an inherent property of the apple because it doesn't need anyone to color it red. It's just naturally that way.

The doctrine of inherency comes up a lot in legal settings. For example, if someone invents something new like a machine that automatically sorts balls by size, they might want to patent it so nobody else can make the same thing. But if sorting balls by size is something that was already inherent in all machines, they can't get a patent because they didn't actually invent anything new.

So, the doctrine of inherency basically says that if something has a certain property that's already inherent in it, nobody can claim to have invented or created it. It's just a natural feature of that thing.