This seminar mainly involves some matters that customers pay more attention to in case writing, and customers also illustrate these matters in the form of actual cases.
The author benefited a lot from this seminar. Here, the author mainly combines the relevant provisions of patent applications in China and the United States to talk about some thoughts on the issue of "illustrated".
As far as the current domestic situation is concerned, the attention of agents to "specifications and drawings" is generally not high. As for how to provide the attached drawings of the instruction manual, the laws and regulations only stipulate in the fifth paragraph of Article 17 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law of China:
As far as China's application for a patent for invention is concerned, the application for a patent for invention may not even be accompanied by instructions.
The U.S. Patent Law (35 U.S.C. 1 13) and the Patent Examination Procedure Manual (MPEP) stipulate that the applicant shall provide drawings when necessary to understand the theme of the patent application; The examiner may request the submission of the attached drawings (608.02 Attached Drawings, Publication, MPEP) if the essence of this subject can be explained in the form of attached drawings, but the applicant has not provided the attached drawings.
It can be seen that there are some differences between Chinese and American patent agencies in the requirements of appended drawings in patent applications. Specifically, it conforms to the detailed rules for the implementation of China's patent law, although the China Patent Examination Guide points out in Section 2.3 of Chapter 2 of Part II that "the appended drawings are an integral part of the specification". However, this section goes on to point out:
Later, it was clearly defined:
Therefore, although the drawings in the specification have similar functions (-MPEP), they are all used to help understand the subject to be patented; However, different from the relevant provisions of the United States, the position of the appended drawings in the specification of China's application for a patent for invention is a "supplement" to the description of the text part of the specification, which "enables people to intuitively and vividly understand the various technical features and overall technical scheme of the invention or utility model". In other words, relatively speaking, the drawings in the China patent application seem to be less "important" (or "necessary") than those in the US patent application.
Perhaps for the above reasons, as far as computer-based invention applications are concerned, some patent agents only draw one or several drawings on the basis of one or several independent claims in practice, such as drawing a method flow chart according to the steps in the method claim, which is similar to a kind of "standardized flow". This practice can improve the efficiency of handling cases, complete and submit cases as soon as possible, and avoid mistakes; Under the framework of China's patent law, this practice is understandable, because the application documents do not violate any laws and regulations. Therefore, this practice is in line with the interests of customers to a certain extent.
However, further analysis will reveal that China's patent examination standards are "compatible" with those of the United States only as far as the appended drawings of the invention application are concerned (but not vice versa). That is, if the appended drawings are compiled according to the American patent examination standards, then the appended drawings conform to the current patent examination standards in China. Based on this consideration, if the customer has the demand of overseas application (especially American application), it is suggested that the specification and drawings of the prior patent application in China should also be prepared according to stricter standards.
In addition, although the drawings obtained through the above-mentioned "standardization process" are drawings in form, they are still highly abstract because they may be just another form of independent claims, so this kind of drawings can not well achieve the purpose of "enabling people to intuitively and vividly understand the various technical features and overall technical solutions of inventions or utility models". According to Section 2.3 of Chapter 2, Part II of China Patent Examination Guide:
As far as the computer-realized invention application is concerned, one of the understandings reached between the agent team and the customer in this seminar is the related technical realization scenario, hardware topology structure, and even the operation mode and changes of the graphical user interface, which is beneficial for readers to better understand the purpose of the invention, the means of invention realization and the technical effect of the invention, to speed up the examination process of the invention and to clarify the creativity of the invention.
Therefore, the author believes that "standardized process" has its advantages; However, when necessary (for example, when customers will arrange overseas patents according to the current domestic patent application situation), it is recommended to prepare the instructions and drawings according to stricter standards. In practice, "stricter standards" can at least be considered from the following aspects:
1. Draw separate drawings for important minor inventions;
2. Draw the attached drawings for the parallel minor inventions to clarify their differences;
3. Draw the attached drawings according to different realization methods of the same technical feature;
4. Drawing technology to realize the scene and hardware topology;
5. The operation mode of drawing graphical user interface and its changes;
6. Draw the specific logical structure of the hardware.
Here, these suggestions only consider the basic requirements that the attached drawings in the specification should meet in form and their role in explaining the content of the invention, and have not yet involved other relevant provisions. Compared with the existing "standardized process", the above suggestions may lead to a significant increase in case processing time, so the specific operation when drawing the attached drawings can be determined by the agent according to the specific situation of the customer and the case.
Limited to time and energy, please correct me if there are any mistakes or omissions.