2 ms·
I hope he never has to read a US patent where "comprised of" is almost a required usage not only in the spec, but in the claims! It's expected by the examiners
by kurthr 4y ago
I hope he never has to read a US patent where "comprised of" is almost a required usage not only in the spec, but in the claims! It's expected by the examiners and demanded by patent lawyers as a term of art as interpreted by an appellate court.
The term "comprises" and/or "comprised of" has a specific usage in patents. Comprising means that at least all of the listed elements must exist, but other elements that are not mentioned in the claim may also be present. This in turn allows for dependent claims.
The alternative term is "consists" and/or "consists of", which means that only the listed elements may be present. It is used almost exclusively when claiming chemical or molecular formulas.
- bombcar 4y agoI dare say you could find some of those 90k changes are to patent wording on Wikipedia.
- kurthr 3y agoIt's weird I suppose, but in anything other than a very formal (legal, medical, scientific, education, marketing?!?) contexts I find correcting another fluent speaker's english to be (especially colloquialisms, grammar, and word choice) just wrong. You can add context to it, but not really correct. Unless they're a dear friend, and they knew what they meant to say better than you. A person is expressing their feeling/opinion/interpretation in their vernacular. Yes, it is probably stream of consciousness, but that is exactly what it is, and just changing one word or phrase doesn't help make it clear. I suppose wikipedia is edumacational so I guess I understand, but unless he's really reading all of the surrounding context of 90k pages (unlikely) then he certainly risks making embarrassing errors.