[Patents] are claims OR'ed or AND'ed?

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

Greg writes:

> Mostly correct for US patents.  For US patents, there are two kinds of
> claims: independent and dependent.  Independent claims are usually
> broad, and are "OR"ed together (in the words of the questioner).
> Dependent claims are associated with specific independent claims, and
> narrow the scope of the independent claim (i.e.  ANDed to the
> independent claim).

All claims stand for themselves, i.e. are 'OR'ed together.
Some dependent claims explicitely reference an independent claim as part
of themselves.

> There is one more narrowing that goes on, at least in the US.  All
> claims are interpreted with respect to the patent specification.  For
> example, you could see a really broad claim ("A method of finance,
> comprising sort a list of income figures"), and think, "That is
> outrageous as a claim" - and maybe so, but the claim is limited to the
> financial sorting techniques explicitly described in the patent
> application, which could be quite narrow in scope.

It is often said that US courts interpret claims more narrowly on the
basis of the description while European courts take them literally.
A paper from a german patent examiner at the EU consultation

        http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eukonsult00/angumema/

demands that if we imitate something from the american patent system then
it should be this.

Still, I am not so sure whether the difference is great.  In case of doubt
about the meaning of a patent claim, the description is used, both in EU
and US. And doubt tends to arise as soon as a patent infringement case
goes to court.

> So in many cases, a really broad claim is actually quite narrow (though
> I have been arguing for years that broad independent claims should be
> explicitly narrower, promoting some of the narrowness of the dependent
> claims and specification into the independent claims).

The basic principle is that you can claim as broad as you want, as long as
no prior art falls into the scope you claim.  And when dealing with
abstract subject matter such as software innovation, broadening the scope
is very easy.

> It is a problem that affects all areas of technology, including software,
... [usual trolling deleted]

--
Hartmut Pilch                                           http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation        http://swpat.ffii.org/
80000 signatures against software patents         http://www.noepatents.org/