Patent Law

Patent Claims, Like Football, is a Game of Inches

By John Rizvi

In the movie Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino played a football coach tony D'Amato in a wonderful locker-room motivational speech telling his players to keep playing even when everything seems stacked against them and fight for every inch.  Watch the short 3-4 minute video below first and then lets look into how this is relevant to drafting the claims of a patent.

"An inch can mean the difference between victory and defeat", he said, and if you want to win in football or in life, you have to give it all you have for those inches. 

The Claims of a Patent Represent Intellectual Real Estate

Like a deed in real estate, a patents claims stake out the scope of property protected by a patent.  Claim an invention too broadly and your patent is likely to be rejected.  Draft claims that are too narrow and you are leaving money on the table.  Precision is important but so is aggressive prosection.  A good patent attorney will FIGHT for the absolute broadest protection possible for his clients. 

As aptly stated above in the quote from Al Pacino playing Coach Tony D'Amato, "an inch can mean the difference between victory and defeat".

Full post as published by Florida Intellectual Property Law Blog on September 25, 2009 (boomark / email).