What are the qualities that differentiate your invention from others?
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What are the qualities that differentiate your invention from others? Video Transcript
We are in the most critical phase of this Patent Express flow and your patent application, and that is the creation of an embodiment list. An embodiment list is basically a listing of the most critical things that you want to try and protect. The way that you create an embodiment list is to really, really think about what it is that is new about your invention. A good structured way that we developed here for you has you first starting off by identifying qualities and benefits of your invention. Pretend you are a salesperson or someone who is going to market your idea. Identify what are the distinctive competitive advantages that are created because of your invention and how they can differentiate from the market place of other competing products to convince someone that you have something unique and valuable that someone else should want. So start with the qualities and benefits by making a list of sentences. When you make this list of quality benefits, avoid using words that are superfluous – “great”, “the best” - you do not want to use words like that. Think specifically what makes it the best, what makes it great and write the qualities and benefits as distinctly as possible so it is very clear what those benefits are. So it is very important to critically evaluate what you are doing in the quality and benefits section so that each one in your list is not just a vague statement but a very specific one that identifies what quality and benefit of your invention is really valuable to a potential consumer or customer. That list of qualities and benefits can be used to help identify your primary elements, your secondary elements and your substitute elements. The primary elements are the most essential portions of your qualities and benefits that make your invention operational, that make your invention work or to perform the function as it is designed to do. So only the subset, usually it is three to five things from your quality and benefits, if written properly in a most succinct way, that will help to identify what are the primary elements that need to be in every single case to identify the boundaries of your invention. The primary elements, by the way, will be used to create independent claims. So you should be very, very careful when you write these and think about them. Spend a lot of time, review them, rewrite them, make sure there are no superfluous words and make sure each and everything in your primary benefits is really essential to your invention. The secondary benefits are things that you can do or options or peripherals or things that can be added on to your base idea to make your invention even more valuable to a particular type of user or customer or client. These secondary benefits should be listed as things that did not make it to the primary benefits list but still are valuable because they are variations of your invention that you might do or your company might do. The last section beyond secondary benefits is the substitute elements. The substitute elements really have to do with things that others might do to get around your invention, what would someone else do. So take a look at your primary benefits and secondary benefits and see what are the design-arounds that someone else might do. The primary elements will become independent claim candidates in the future when you go that section. The secondary and substitute elements will be candidates for dependent claims, which narrow the basic concept that you have from your primary elements to more specific examples were additional value can be had from your invention. So I hope this is clear. Take time to do this and be sure you elect a procedural review through our site, if you like, and make sure you have really put thought into this because this is what makes and breaks a patent application – doing this section correctly. Make sure you have listed out very clearly what are the true things that would be differentiating your invention from others in the marketplace and what are the essential features that make your invention operational. Those are the keys to making this embodiment list a success.