What do write a Background section of a patent application?
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What do write a Background section of a patent application? Video Transcript
In this section we are going to write the background of your invention. The background of your invention needs to be done very carefully. Backgrounds can be treated as admissions often when patents become valuable. So you want to make sure in the background section you do not say anything about your invention. Remember that objects list that we just created; the objects list might help you formulate a background. But really, your background needs to just focus on the central problem that is relevant to the primary elements that you listed. What is the central problem that existed in the market place prior to your invention? A good way to think about the background is in three phases. You can look at it as first describing a history of the prior inventions to yours, the exact prior technology, what it was that addressed the same problem and what were the deficiencies in those prior technologies. You want to make sure that you do not say anything about your invention. You do not want to talk about too much historical basis that is not directly relevant to your invention because all those statements that you say could be used against you. You just want to lay the foundation of the problem that existed before your invention was made, make it very clear to the reader what that prior technology was, how it works and what were its limitations. You do not want to say anything necessarily good about the prior technology, just what were its limitations. Those limitations should ideally be the limitations that your invention is going solve. Hopefully the primary elements of your independent claims, or your primary elements list that you just made previously in the previous section, solves. That is the best way to do a background. It should be short. It should be one or two paragraphs at the most. Do not make a long narrative thing. If you do, you probably need to make it more distilled to center around your point of novelty. Backgrounds are dangerous things. You do not want to make them too long because they can be used against you. Ideally, make them no more than two pages at most, a couple of paragraphs ideally, make sure it is very clear to help the reader understand the central problem that existed, not your invention.