Claiming a subjective property

JimIvey

Subjective as in assessed by a person?  My guess is that the property is tied to something, and that characterizing that something in the claims is all that's required.  Here's a shot in the dark:

 Receiving information from a human patient assessing the property from the perspective of the human patient; and
 modifying element (a) in accordance with the information.

Of course, that's rough and off the top of my head, but it may give you ideas.

Good luck.

Wiscagent

I?ve seen patents wherein the specification defines a test method for a subjective property in a way that makes it more objective.  You can take a property such as odor or softness and develop a test.  Also in some doctors? offices I have seen charts that assign numbers to how tired or how much pain the patient is experiencing.


If you?ve got a well written test method and some test data to support your claims it may work.  Ideally you can demonstrate that the test is reproducible, and uses standards that will be available some years in the future.

In the United States claims of these sort have a much better chance of passing muster than in Europe.  Try doing a search for US Patents with claims that use words such as soft or strong or colorful.

Richard Tanzer