Before reading this article you must be familiar with the term patent. In brief a patent is a right granted to an inventor by the federal government that permits the inventor to exclude others from making, selling or using the invention for a period of time. Now when you know what patent is, let’s dig deeper into it.

The paramount part of a whole patent document is its CLAIMS!

What is a Claim?

A Claim in a patent defines its scope i.e. the area of protection (right to exclude everyone or to solely have right on claimed technology) a patent gets or it can be define as the bounds of what the inventor is claiming as their invention. Claims are the most critical part of a patent as all the prosecutions and litigations are mainly done on claims only. Claims lead a patent. If a patent is a championship belt, then Claims is no doubt the heavy-weight that keeps throwing knock-out blows.
“If patent is body, claim is its soul!”

How to Identify a Claim?

• Claims are written as a single sentence.
• A claim starts with an identifier i.e. “Claim 1”.
• Claims are heavily punctuated (, : ; .).

[“,” Is used after preamble.
“:” is used after transitional phase.
“;” is used to separate paragraphs within the body.
“.” Is used to end the claim.]

• Claims happen to occur in the end of a granted patent or a patent application.

Parts of Claim

Let’s look into it with an example:

An apparatus, comprising:

Where:

Types of Transitions

Role of Transitional Phrases

Transitional phrases are the key of drafting a patent. Let’s see how this key is going to work for you.