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Make sure you read the claims carefully -- only the claims can be infringed, and often the claims are much narrower than the description. (A patent claim can b
by dctoedt 17y ago
Make sure you read the claims carefully -- only the claims can be infringed, and often the claims are much narrower than the description.
(A patent claim can be thought of as an AND statement, or as an infringement checklist - see a posting I did this morning for more details, at http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-work-a-variety-of-different-and-statements-all-ord-together/ http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/how-patent-claims-wor...
EDIT: Usual disclaimers: Don't rely on this as legal advice, I'm not your lawyer, etc., etc.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dctoedt 17y agoI also did another post on the validity subject (woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep) - see http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/patent-validity-the-claims-and-statements-cannot-return-true-when-applied-to-prior-art/ http://www.ontechnologylaw.com/2010/04/patent-validity-the-c.... Usual disclaimers: Don't rely on this as legal advice, I'm not your lawyer, etc., etc.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Todd 17y agoI would highly recommend Patent it Yourself from NOLO Press. It goes into great detail about claims. As a software person, you're at an advantage in understanding the logical language of claims. One important aspect is the independent claim and the dependent claim (a dependent claim starts with language like "The X of claim Y, wherein..."). Each dependent claim is combined with the associated independent claim to form a complete statement. To reinforce what dctoedt said, the claims are all that matter. The description is used to provide a human readable background and to show someone how they might implement your invention. Only in rare circumstances is the description used to limit the claims (primarily in the case of means claims, I believe). IANAL; this should not be construed as legal advice.