Patenting of an invention grants protection to that invention. But is a national patent sufficient under the specific national law sufficient? Does the same guarantee that no one else will try to patent your invention in some other country? To answer all these concerns of inventors WIPO has formulated a solution and the solution is known as Patent Cooperation treaty. It is an international agreement for filing patent applications and the same will have effect in many countries. An application under PCT grants the inventor the right and option to file a single international patent application in one language with one patent office to simultaneous protection of the invention in all the countries which is a signatory to PCT. This international application so filed under PCT has the same effect as that of filing a national application.
Drafting of a patent application is significant as a poorly drafted application will lead to litigation and economic distress. There are two types of patent applications namely provisional and non provisional application. The provisional application can be filed at the initial stage without any requirement of formalities and a patent owner can be benefited from the provisional application if a subsequent non provisional application is filed within 12 months of filing the provisional application. Hence filing the non provisional application is of much importance as it is that determines the patentability of an invention/technology. A typical non provisional application shall contain
Title describes the invention in short, Cross reference identifies provisional patent applications related to present application and Statement regarding federally sponsored research mentions the required clause in case the invention is made under a government contract. Background of the invention describes the field of invention and relevant prior art which can include foreign patent prior art, publications and other sources apart from United States patents. The summary describes the invention in detail than in the abstract but does not contain details given in the description of the embodiment. Each figure of the drawing is described in short in the brief description of the drawing. Patent applications for chemical arts generally contain structural formulas and flow charts instead of figures. The detailed description of the invention shall explain the invention and its mode of manufacture and operation in clear, concise and exact terms. Sequence listing is required only if the application contains a nucleotide or amino acid sequence.
The claims are brief descriptions of the matter of the invention and differentiate the invention from past inventions thereby affirming the novelty of the proposed invention. An application to be well drafted, it is better to draft claims first so that the inventions can be well-organized. Abstract of disclosure is included in the end page and shortly describes the essence of invention and its purpose in not more than 100 words.
A well drafted patent application is the first step towards protecting your patents. These claims are what distinguish the patents from each other. It is for the same reason that great importance is imparted to drafting patent applications. The role of patent drafter is very important in drafting a patent. The terms used in the drafting the claims play a very important role in protecting your patents. Ambiguous language might weaken the protection granted to your patent. We at Biz & Legis are experienced enough in patent drafting to ensure that there are no loopholes in the patent application.