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

[ramon@jl1.quim.ucm.es (Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez)]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 12:01:22PM -0400, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> 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).

Greg here can be misunderstood. Dependent claims are those claims that
say "apparatus according to claim 1, where in addition ....". Dependent
claims do not restrict the main claim, that is, the main claim does
not loose scope because of the dependent claims present. They
logically include the main claim. One has to make a logical "AND" of the
main claim when reading a dependent claim. They are particular cases
of the main claim, and give the patentee redundant blocking for these
cases.

Ramon