Thursday, May 25, 2017

Reasons For Adding Claims To A Patent

By Jessica Sanders


In the technological era of today, it has become a norm to see new, innovative systems that leave eyebrows raised and jaws dropped. New technologies hatch new devices that equip people with an easier way of maneuvering through some intricacies in life. To avoid illegal infringements, Adding Claims to a Patent assumes the first priority to an inventor. Protecting your interests, after the long run, benefits an individual after full public disclosure.

By definition, a patent is a collection of exclusive rights provided by the government to an innovative inventor over a premeditated time in exchange for full public disclosure of the invention. Therefore, inventors provide a detailed information about a discovery for which they are seeking protection. As a matter of fact, the information is the pith focus of applications, for without them, an examining official will reject the application.

The body empowered with the authority of granting protection is the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Usually, it grants protection rights after a critical evaluation of the details provided in the claim. That just signals the high importance of this provision. An inventor may provide broad insights about their technological invention, but without including the description of their claims, then the entire application process may go awry.

The claims are the pith of an application filing. For the it to command consideration from examiners, every dependent claim should be well documented. Despite this fact, it is unfortunate that many people still ignore the importance of adhering to the due process. Their heightened ignorance of such issues have left many inventors wallowing in despair after infringements that they cannot legally challenge, simply because of failure to incorporate details in their patents.

Filing for claims involves a lot. Without proper understanding of the process, the probability of making mistakes is high. That is when patent attorneys come in handy. They have a versed understanding of Intellectual Property statutes. They can therefore provide legal counsel to their clients. Further, if they hold a litigation license, they can argue on your behalf in court proceedings involving protection rights.

Following an application, an examining officer may refute a grant, perhaps because they see an invention as inspired by a prior art. Therefore, it is perceived not novel. In such a case, amendments can be made to the clauses to counter this dejection. People amend their patent claims for various reasons. Some of them are discussed below.

One of the common and obvious amendments is combining two or more dependent claims in the application as part of the main document. Usually, an examiner will have already pointed out whether every dependent claim is challenged. That makes it easy to say whether their amendments will be strong enough to warrant considerable reviews. The benefit of using dependent clauses is that they reduce the cost of court prosecution, as they can be amended to challenge an objection.

Inventors can also make changes in their claims after protection has been granted. Normally, such amendments are meant to preserve the validity period. However, such reviews do not warrant an extension of protection rights.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment