- Question: What is the most important section of a utility patent? Answer: The legal claims.
- Question: Where do you find the legal claims in a utility patent? Answer: Usually follows the “Preferred Embodiment or Detailed Description of The Invention” Section and begins with
“What is claimed” or “I claim” or “We claim”. - Question: Do all the claims need to be infringed in order for there to be a patent infringement? Answer: No, only one of the base claim(s) needs to be infringed. A base claim is a claim that is not dependent on
another claim and is usually but not always the first claim. - Question: How is a legal claim drafted? Answer: The invention is broken down into its major functional elements, and each functional element is described
in the claims. - Question: Should the functional elments be described in great detail or with little detail? Answer: Claims that contain a lot of words and thus a lot of detail limit the scope of protection for your invention,
thus making it easier for potential infringers to engineer around your patent. The goal should be naming
as few functional elements as possible and also using as few words as possible to describe those elements. - Question: Am I able on my own to view the claim drafting work of a patent attorney? Answer: Yes, log into www.uspto.gov/ and click on “search for patents” and then under “Searching Full Text
Patents” click on “Quick Search” and type in “last name; first name” of the patent attorney in the “Term 1”
box and click on “Search”. Click on any of the utility patents listed with a seven digit number and then page
to the claims section.
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