Thursday, August 14, 2008

How to claim more powerfully through smart synonyms

In this Patent Writing: Claim category I have analyzed absolute musts for patent claims. There is more to it - besides the absolute necessity for making claims acceptable, and more so, have substantial claiming power, an inventor has to be on constant lookout for strategic synonym use.

For -use

Thus, I have already mentioned that For can be easily Use:

...said lever for said activating of... >> said activating uses said lever

one and only one -----a single:

...said computing unit containing one and only one RAM shunt...

...said computing unit containing a single RAM shunt...

The enough trap

And here is the famous colloquialism that can even kill a patent: the enough trap. In patent language, where there is no OR but AND (read this post), enough means an "undetermined quanitty beyond which the results are unwanted, or negative. This is the solution

enough----- a sufficient number of

...said steps 3 to 7 performed enough to yield transparent mixture...

enough here, in patent language, means do them indiscriminately, maybe in any order, or any number of the steps enough to...

it should be:

...said steps 3 to 7 performed sufficient number of times to yield transparent mixture...

Good Structures Connect Operationally

This is good for any language describing a structure of anything:

attached to associated with<----------> operationally connected to

Done is effected

done by ----------effected by

...a widget for acting... (if the action is a widget featuring means for acting (or maybe a widget operative to)crucial to the invention)

instead of

x is effected by means of y

is better served by (also read this) since means can be literally too widgety of a term

x is effected by using y

Simple, isn't it?

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