What is the class of your invention?
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What is the class of your invention? Video Transcript
In this section, we are going to discuss patent invention class and the invention title. The invention class has to do with the general area where your invention falls. The Patent and Trademark Office identifies four invention classes. It is either a machine, it is an article of manufacture, it is a composition of matter, or it is a process. What are the differences? A machine is mechanical or electrical object that performs a particular function. The article of manufacture can be any physical good that has utility that can be used for something useful. That is the second class. It could be an object that has a particular function or a particular design that has utility that could be used for something useful. The third class, composition of matter, are used chemical compounds or pharmaceutical drugs that take different elements and put them together to create something new and useful. The last class, the process, is method of doing things. So business methods, internet ideas often are classified as processes. So are certain ways of solving a problem using a series of steps. This is the first thing you need to do is identify one of these four classes that characterize what your invention largely centers around. The second thing is to select the title. You might ask yourself, maybe my invention is both a process and it is a machine. In that case, you need to select one where your primary invention falls. With your title, you can create titles that are both machine and process. The best titles are both machine and process unless you are absolutely sure that your invention is just a machine or just a process. You want to also make sure your title is short. Ideally, it is 500 words or less, but really it should be no more than, in my view, 10 words. The more succinct you make your title the better it is so it is clear to people what your invention is all about. The title should be slightly broader than your claims that you will be writing later. You can go back and adjust your title. At least, for now, write the title so that when people read it, they know what your invention is. Make it specific enough so it identifies the point of novelty, but not so specific that it limits what your invention scope might end up being. Try to make it both method and machine or composition of matter and method or process, because method and process, by the way, are used synonymously and interchangeably, so that you can allow for the title to read upon both types of inventive concepts that you might protect in different forms either of method and apparatus.