> Awaiting a patent lawyer who does this every day I am a registered patent attorney (*), but I don't practice in patent prosecution. > a fly swatting device

> Awaiting a patent lawyer who does this every day I am a registered patent attorney (*), but I don't practice in patent prosecution. > a fly swatting device ... And you would say in your spec ... You're alluding to means-plus-function claiming. "An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function ... and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof." (35 USC 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 USC 112 sixth paragraph). > You should not have claim elements that are known in the art, and furthermore, you'd have failed to claim the book, newspaper, magazine, etc. methods of killing the fly. As a strategic matter, I agree because you usually want to claim the broadest, most essential form of an invention, and that's a good reason to use means-plus-function claiming. The presence of prior art elements in a claim, however, do not invalidate the claim because (1) for a prior art reference to anticipate a claim, all elements must be present in the prior art reference (all elements rule), and (2) for non-anticipating prior art references to render a claim obvious, the claim must be considered as a whole, not element-by-element. (35 USC 103, "...such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious..."). (*) Not your attorney, not legal advice, etc.