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Introduction
A well drafted application decides the fate of an invention.
Drafting plays a vital role in the success of an invention during its
prosecution, management and maintenance during its tenure and
turning it into cash. Drafting a patent application is one of the most
important and at the same time one of the most difficult process.
Considering the purpose Patents Serve i.e. giving a twenty years
protection (generally) for disclosing the inventions, Patents need to be
strong techno-legal documents.
Broadly categorizing reasons for refusal of Patent Application,
grounds can be non-procedural and procedural. Inventions have to be
Novel, Inventive/ Non-Obvious and Useful/ industrially applicable in
order to get a Patent. However, invention satisfying these three criteria
does not guarantee grant of Patent as insufficiently skilled drafting of
Patent Application and/or replies to Office Actions from Patent Office
and/or non-compliance with procedural aspects may be impediment.
As discussed earlier, Patents being techno legal documents, its not
uncommon to see deserving inventions being denied Patent for the
aforementioned reasons. Despite all the complexities involved, some
inventors still give Patent drafting a try (though many times
unsuccessful).
Parts of the Indian Patent Specification: General Background
In India, Patent Application may be accompanied either by
Provisional or Complete Specification. Form 1 is used for the
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Section 10 of the Patents Act, 1970 deals with the Contents of the
specification and sets out certain requirements to be met in order to
get a Patent Granted. It has been reproduced below for the ease of
discussion:
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Contents of specifications.
(1) Every specification, whether provisional or complete, shall describe
the invention and shall begin with a title sufficiently indicating the
subject-matter to which the invention relates.
(2) Subject to any rules that may be made in this behalf under this Act,
drawings may, and shall, if the Controller so requires, be supplied for
the purposes of any specification, whether complete or provisional; and
any drawings so supplied shall, unless the Controller otherwise directs
be deemed to form part of the specification, and references in this Act to
a specification shall be construed accordingly.
(3) If, in any particular case, the Controller considers that an application
should be further supplemented by a model or sample of anything
illustrating the invention or alleged to constitute an invention, such
model or sample as he may require shall be furnished before the
application is found in order for grant of a patent, but such model or
sample shall not be deemed to form part of the specification.
(4) Every complete specification shall
(a) fully and particularly describe the invention and its operation or use
and the method by which it is to be performed;
(b) disclose the best method of performing the invention which is known
to the applicant and for which he is entitled to claim protection; and
(c) end with a claim or claims defining the scope of the invention for
which protection is claimed;
(d) be accompanied by an abstract to provide technical information on
the invention:
Provided that
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(i) the Controller may amend the abstract for providing better
information to third parties; and
(ii) if the applicant mentions a biological material in the specification
which may not be described in such a way as to satisfy clauses (a) and
(b), and if such material is not available to the public, the application
shall be completed by depositing the material to an international
depository authority under the Budapest Treaty and by fulfilling the
following conditions, namely:
(A) the deposit of the material shall be made not later than the date of
filing the patent application in India and a reference thereof shall be
made in the specification within the prescribed period;
(B) all the available characteristics of the material required for it to be
correctly identified or indicated are included in the specification
including the name, address of the depository institution and the date
and number of the deposit of the material at the institution;
(C) access to the material is available in the depository institution only
after the date of the application of patent in India or if a priority is
claimed after the date of the priority;
(D) disclose the source and geographical origin of the biological material
in the specification, when used in an invention.
(4A) In case of an international application designating' India, the title,
description, drawings, abstract and claims filed with the application
shall be taken as the complete specification for the purposes of this Act.
(5) The claim or claims of a complete specification shall relate to a single
invention, or to a group of inventions linked so as to form a single
inventive concept, shall be clear and succinct and shall be fairly based
on the matter disclosed in the specification.
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Field of Invention
State of the art in the field (Background & Prior Art)
Object of invention
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The requirements set out by the law for each part is as below.
Title:
According to section 10 (1) of the Patents Act, "Title" should be
sufficiently indicating the subject-matter to which the invention
relates. Rule 13 (7) (a) requires title to disclose the specific features of
the invention normally in not more than fifteen words. Though in
practice, very rarely objections have been raised based on title being
non-indicative, its always recommended to write an indicative title in
less than fifteen words. Title should not contain any Irrelevant or
other matter not necessary for the elucidation of the Invention.
Further, title should be free from fancy expressions and ambiguities.
Some terms that should be avoided in a title are:-
Inventors name
The word Patent
Words in other languages
Usage of Abbreviations such as etc
Fancy words such as Best Furniture
i. Avoid using the term Prior art per se while describing the state
of the art or anywhere in the patent specification.
ii. The state of the art section should not label anything as the
invention while describing prior art(s). The section should not be
titled as State of the art for the invention. Inclusion of the word
invention may limit the interpretation of the inventive subject
matter to the disclosed prior art.
iii. The state of the art should only highlight the problem that the
invention solves. It should not be used to describe solution of the
identified problem. For instance, the section should not include
sentences such as there is need for systems and methods that
allow automatic transfer
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Object of Invention:
Object of the invention, also referred to as objective of the
invention, refers to what the invention aims to achieve. It highlights
the technical problems associated with the existing technology and
aims at providing a solution for that by bringing out the differences
between the invention and the related prior art.
Solution sought by the invention should be clearly brought out in
the patent specification with statements like It has already been
proposed followed by the object(s) which the invention has in view,
e.g., The principal object of the invention is, Another object of the
invention is, A further object of the invention is, etc.
Some effective strategies and points to remember while describing this
section are
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Summary:
Statement of invention, also commonly referred to as Summary,
precedes the detailed description section that describes the actual
implementations and embodiments of an invention. Statement of
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inventor finds out a better way of carrying out the invention after the
filing, its generally not compulsory to add the new mode to the patent
specification unless the examiner explicitly asks for it. Furthermore, in
case a patent specification includes several modes of carrying out an
invention, some of which are more preferred than others, the patent
specification does not need to indicate which mode the inventor
considers to be the best mode.
Each invention can have one or more implementations. An
implementation depicts multiple features of an invention and how
various elements of that feature combine together to show the desired
effect. For instance, computer processors can have multiple
implementations for the purpose of providing the desired performance
and are available at different pricing options. A processor architecture
that supports a particular instruction set may have a first-level cache
in one implementation, and may have both first and second level
cache in another implementation. Therefore, in cases where an
invention has multiple implementations of carrying out the single
inventive concept, its beneficial to incorporate and describe all
possible implementations to broaden the scope of the invention.
However, care should be taken to make sure that each implementation
points out to the same inventive concept. Inclusion of an
implementation that functions away from what the inventive subject
matter teaches would get a rejection based on the unity of invention.
The detailed description should support every element and
feature that needs to be protected in the patent application. The
invention should also fulfil the criterion of enablement, wherein the
invention is described to the extent necessary to be enabling and with
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Conclusion
It is the disclosure in the specification based on which patent
rights are decided. Drafting the specification in laymans language can
lead to, no or very limited protection for the invention. Effective
protection may be ensured if all requirements of patentability are
satisfied in the specification and the mistakes listed are taken care to
eliminate off. Writing a specification is one thing but to be able to
refine a specification to perfection is a job that requires extensive care
. One who drafts a specification may consider reviewing the final
drafted specification from a prosecutors point of view, infringers point
of view and as well as a litigators point of view so that mistakes are
not overlooked and the final draft is perfectly toned.
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BIBILIOGRAPHY
References
Books
Websites
i. http://www.ipindia.nic.in
ii. http://www.wipo.int
iii. http://www.invntree.com
iv. www.ipwatchdog.com
v. https://spicyip.com
vi. www.bitlaw.com
vii. lawyerscollective.com