I was meeting with a client last week and going over a proposed claim amendment. He felt that one of the independent claims would be too narrow. So, I asked him, “would it still cover your product?” After some discussion we were both comfortable that it would. Then I asked him, “does it still cover the way your competitors would most likely try to do this?” again, we both felt it did. Finally I asked him, “as an inventor, if you saw this claim and it belonged to a competitor, how would you design around it?” We spent a quite a bit of time talking through alternatives. We focused on the feasibility of each relative to his claimed product. All of the various alternative either wouldn’t work as well or would cost significantly more than his claimed invention.
The lesson here was that while broad claims can be great when you want to accuse someone of infringement, you will have to defend the patentability of those broad claims if the issue goes to court. Typically, this defense will be against prior art you don’t know exists before the lawsuit. Conversely, drafting narrow claims can lead to an issued patent, but the questions above are important to ask to make sure you don’t cede so much ground that your competitors can easily design around your claims.
These narrow claims are also helpful in those cases where a competitor can design around them. While their competing product may not infringe your claim, that competing product will, hopefully, be at a competitive disadvantage due to performance or cost.
One example for this concept is the rubber-band effect for scrolling on Apple iOS devices that was patented and litigated in the Samsung case. Those claims are very detailed and correspondingly narrow. They have pushed many phone manufactures to not include the feature or provide a modified version of it. However, exact copying of the way Apple implemented the concept was still protected by the claims.
Don’t only try for the broadest claim you can. Sometimes, in the long run, narrow claims can be very powerful. Their value isn’t just in the damages an infringer may pay, but also in the competitive disadvantage non-infringing product will have.
Makes a lot of sense. A problem that has recently become annoying is that some U.S. patent examiners have been going wild on election of species requirements with very poor justifications. ditto on restriction requirements.
So when you narrow claims, either by modifying an element or adding an element to an underlying relatively broad claim, you face these smetimes mindless requirements. It seems the examiners know that they are not very likely to get fired for their antics, and are being lazy. I have even had one who had done a search thorough enough to examine all my original claims but chose to impose a four-way restriction and an election of species. This may make some clients wonder if you know what you are doing.
Filing petitions can add delay and expense. Some examiners have even started refusing interviews at the USPTO where, perhaps, such issues could be resolved. Guess it is to much trouble for some to get dressed and come in to the traditional workplace instead of working at home in their underwear.
I’ve also noticed the uptick in restriction/election requirements, and many are thinly supported to say the least.
This is especially useful where we want to use a patent prosecution highway approach to speed up prosecution by filing in the PCT or another country, first. The examiners (at least in the chemical arts) are much happier with giving a positive report when they can focus on a smaller prior art field.
That has been my experience as well when dealing with the ISA. Thanks for taking the time to comment.