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Patent Application

Drawings

Drawings

In applying for the legal protection of patent registration under United States law, applicants will be answerable to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 
In order for patent drawings to effectively play a part in registration proceedings, they must be submitted in a mandated format, designed to regularize proceedings, ensure that the invention’s details are readily understandable and provide for the ultimate publication, upon successfully passing into registration, of the invention. 
Some of the details which must conform to the USPTO’s specifications include the type and size of the paper on which the patent drawing is placed and the margins within which the drawing may be made, among others.

What Specification and Claims Can Be Made in a Patent?

What Specification and Claims Can Be Made in a Patent?

In making a patent applicationUnited States Patent and Trademark Office 
The USPTO has a basic template for specifications made in patent applications. The various provisions of a patent application specification should be placed under section headings. These headings should be capitalized and not boldor italicized. Not all of them will be applicable to every patent application, but for the sake of regularized format the USPTO prefers that the headings be included even if no content is placed beneath them. 
In such a case, the applicant may simply write “Not Applicable.” There are ten sections for specifications in patent applications: “Title,” cross references to other patent applications, statements of government sponsorship, “Sequence Listing” references, “Background,” “Brief Summary,” a written account of the drawing’s “several views,” “Detailed Description,” claims, the disclosure abstract, and the actual Sequence listing.
After the description of purpose and functionality, the specification should end with a claim or claims as to the “subject matter” addressed in an innovative manner by the invention.The formats allowed for claims made as to patent applications include independent, dependent, and multiple dependent. Claims in dependent forms include references as to the limitations of the assertions previously made in the claim. A dependent claim contains a reference to a single previous claim. Multiple dependent claims operate toward several previously made claims. Inclusions of dependent claims allow the claim as a whole to be considered to allow for all of the limitations.

Amendments and Corrections to a Patent

Amendments and Corrections to a Patent

In the process of  registering a patent under United States law, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) presides under the statutory framework provided by the provisions of Article 35 of the United States Code. Those questions which may arise in regard to amending or correcting a patent application or registration may be answered by reference to Chapter 25 of Title 35. In this section the prospective patent applicant or current patent holder may find information on “Reissue of defective patents,” Section 251, “Effects of reissue,” Section 252, “Disclaimer,” Section 253, “Certificate of correction of Patent and Trademark Office mistake,” Section 254, “Certificate of correction of applicant’s mistake,” Section 255, and “Correction of named inventor,” Section 256.
Under Section 251, the Director of the USPTO can remedy a patent application that is found after the fact to have been flawed. Such a determination may be made by the USPTO in the event that the patent application did not adequately describe every detail of the invention. It might also be made upon the finding that the claims made by the patent application exceeded permissible limits. For whatever reason that a patent is rendered invalid, the USPTO allows through observance of this provision that the applicant “surrender” the patent to the temporary control of the agency. 
Thus momentarily acceded, the patent will be amended and then reissued. The original patent term will still be in effect. If required, different sections of the patent application may be amended individually. According to Section 252, the reissuing of the patent will not take effect against actions taken by other individuals made before the reissuing took place and which would not have been permissibly prohibited by the originally issued form of the patent.
As allowed for by Section 253, the discovery that one of the “claims” of the original patent application is invalid may be addressed by the patent holder by making a disclaimer and registering it with the USPTO, upon payment of the required fee. This disclaimer will then be incorporated into the patent. It will not affect the validity of the other, separate claims of the patent.
Corrections may be made without charge to the patent in the event that a mistake on the part of the USPTO occasions the need for one. The USPTO may decide to issue either an official certificate of correction to be made part of the official record on the patent, or simply a reissued and corrected patent, either through the provisions of Section 254. Likewise, a mistake made by the applicant is provided for under Section 255. 
This section may only be appealed to in the event that the mistake occurred “in good faith” and was of a minor nature, not altering the substance of the patent’s definition or function. If an individual is mistakenly named or excluded from a patent application which is issued in registration, the matter may be appealed to the USPTO to be corrected, without further need for reissuing the entire patent.