Intellectual Property Law

"The name of the game is the claim"

By Michael Rice

I'm having a little trouble adjusting back into law school study mode after Seattle Startup Weekend, so I thought I'd live blog what I'm reading about patents. My professor wrote a concise guide that explains patent law, and we're on the chapter two: patent claims.

Claims are a specific part of a patent, but they carry huge legal significance. They are central to obtain the patent in the first place, determining whether it's valid if challenged, and of course, for determining whether an infringer is infringing. The claims do not describe the invention, other parts of the patent serve this function.

Instead, a patent claim is a "a precision-drafted, single-sentence definition of the patent owner's right to exclude others." If you've seen them before--and you probably have--you know that they are very cryptic. They have to be because, as the book notes, they are like a verbal fence around the patentee's intellectual property.

By law, 35 USC 112, all patents are required to conclude with one or more claims that "particularly point[] out and distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention." This is known as the definiteness requirement.

Full post as published by Coderights on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).