Friday, August 8, 2008

How to write strong patents using these often neglected caveats

Many patents suffer from too much ego and pompous, advertizing content that disclose zero according to the patenting requirements.

Discovering something: discovery is not manufacture. This is one of most typical patent rejections. Invention necessarily involves the suggestion of an act: new product, new result, new process new combination to produce new product or result.

Misleading description. If there are details which are not necessary and are put in to mislead then the patent is void.

The patenting requirement is to tell of the best method known to ensure good faith on the part of the applicant: if the inventor knowing two agents for effecting an end could by disclosure of one preclude the public from the benefit of the other, he might for his own profit force a more expensive one on the public keeping back the simple and cheap one which is contrary to good faith.

Claim not fairly based: a claim to be supported in the specification must also relate to the problem solved. Otherwise it is too wide. The inventor is entitled protection for an article that embodies his idea but not for an article which while capable of being used to carry out his idea into effect is described in terms which cover things quite unrelated to his idea and do not embody it at all.

Theories that are wrong do not invalidate patent unless it amounts to a statement that would in practice be misleading. This happened in the case of attempts to patent methods of nutrition according to blood types, and in the case of the red Kabalah string.

Grounds of revocation

Insufficiency : the specification is not OK

Non-disclosure of best method

Claim not fairly based - claim not based on specification

Ambiguity - the scope of the claim is not defined

Inutility - it does not solve the defined problem

False suggestion - any falsehood

Prior grant

Lack of novelty - previously revealed

Obviousness

Applicant not entitled to apply- poorly elucidated, formulated, "half-baked" disclosure

Patent obtained in contravention of the rights of the petitioner

Invention not a manufacture)see above)

Use of invention (would be) illegal

Prior secret use

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