What makes a patent?
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What makes a patent? Video Transcript
In this section I am going to talk about what are the different elements of a patent. The different elements of a patent include the title of the patent, the name of the inventors, the serial number which is issued by the Patent Office after the patent is filed and the date of the filing of the patent application. If it is filed, the serial number usually comes with the date of the filing. Any related info as to continuations or parent cases that might be associated with the patent are usually printed on the top or the first paragraph of the patent application or on the cover page of a published application. Another section is the background which lays out the problem that existed that the invention is trying to solve, a summary which basically summarizes the claims in a plain and easier to read format, the detailed description which is a detailed description of the figures of the application which tell a story of the invention and each aspect of the invention to the reader, the brief descriptions of the drawings which is usually single sentences which indicate what the figures are showing, an abstract section which is a small 150 word thing which just generally talks about what the independent claim say. Those are the main portion of a patent application: the title, the field of the invention which is another small one to two sentence line above the background. So the title, the name of the inventor, the field of the technology, the background, the summary, the abstract, the detailed description, the brief description of the drawings, the figures themselves and the claims. The claims are the most important part. The claims are the legal boundaries of the protection of the invention. The claims are written in a legal form. Those are at the end of a pattern application. Each independent claim is one that does not depend on something else. Those are the broadest characterizations of the invention. Those are the entire components of what a patent application has.