The parts of an application for a patent on your product

Again, let’s start with a simple understanding. If you have even the slightest suspicion that you want to patent a product, you need to hire and get legal advice from a patent lawyer or a patent agent. This blog is not legal advice. I am not your lawyer or your agent. I am not providing you with any legal advice, representation, or counsel. You and I have no attorney-client relationship. The purpose of this blog is to introduce you to the vocabulary that you will need when you got to a patent attorney and ask him to help you patent your product.

Most patent applications have the same basic parts, though some will have additional parts not listed here.

1. Background – when you write an application for a patent on your product, you start with a background section that attempts to explain the problem that your product is designed to solve. It is easier to get a patent on your product if the examiner understands why the product is useful.
2. Summary – This section is a short description (often less than 200 words) that gives a rough outline of the product that you are trying to patent. Frequently, a patent lawyer who is trying to patent your product will write the summary toward the end of the process.
3. Drawings – Drawings are critical to the process of getting a patent on your product. A picture is worth a thousand words in the process of getting a patent on your product, and you’ll know that you have enough drawings when it is easy to talk your way through the drawings and explain the invention to someone who is not familiar with the invention but is familiar with products similar to the one that you are trying to patent.
4. Description of the drawings – When the examiner is trying to decide whether to grant a patent on your product, he will read the application, and the description of the drawings gives him a basic idea of the components that make your product work.
5. Detailed description – The detailed description is the longest part of the application. As you work on the patent for your product, you will write a description, which walks through the drawings, and tells the patent examiner everything that someone of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains would need to know to make and use the invention.
6. Claims – The claims are a legal definition of the product that you are trying to patent. While the detailed description should describe the product in the fullest detail possible, the claims should seek to describe the product in the minimum number of words and elements necessary to distinguish the product that you are trying to patent over the things that have come before it.
7. Abstract – The abstract is a description of the product that you are trying to patent in under 150 words.

Remember: This blog is not legal advice. I am not your lawyer or your agent. I am not providing you with any legal advice, representation, or counsel.