Patent proofreading is an important part of the patent lifecycle, and thus learning about the proofreading essentials will benefit us in a number of ways. One can check for mistakes in the patent application for avoiding unnecessary patent rejection scenarios and financial losses. While we file the patent application, there are number of difficult aspects which are required to be filed correctly, before submitting it to the patent office for examination. We use a lot of things, such as punctuation, spellings, paragraphs, technical jargon, patent claims, phrases, specifications, etc. which may or may not be equivalent to what the inventor wants from his work, or it may or may not possess that much power in writing to influence the targeted audience. Therefore, by knowing proofreading essentials, we can check that whether the intended part is actually described and reflected in the application or not.
It means that once the drafting is done, the contents of the application must be carefully read and analyzed, to find out the errors which might be left during the creation of application, and then making possible corrections.
Proofreading essentials also helps in removing any possible harm that could generate infringement risks or any technical risks associated with the functionality of the product. It not only focus on checking only for the errors which are related to the legal claims or only the technical section. But it actually means to review the application from every possible angle, such as technical, legal, language, genre, jargon, grammar, etc.
The following elements are the proofreading essentials (the universal eight) which must be reviewed as part of proofreading:
- Claims: Claims defines the boundaries of scope for what and for what not, the protection is being provided. Proofreading helps in analyzing the claims on the basis of the meaning they convey, use of proper words for description, and data ambiguity. It makes the inventor much more aware about the aspects of the invention. It ensures better data consistency, definite structure, and proper meaning between what is intended and what is actually claimed.
Also read: Patent Claim Drafting: Major Principles
- Invention statement: The invention statement must be written in proper, precise, and descriptive manner. This is so that it can easily be understood by two types of audiences, namely the aware ones and the out-of-subject ones. The aware audience is the one sort of target people who are familiar enough with the background subject knowledge or who hold keen interest in that particular field. It is easier to present description in front of such type of audience since they are already familiar with the terminologies and technical criteria, which are related to the invention. It is important for the inventor to make the explanation in such a way that even a person who does not hold any previous knowledge related to the subject, can also think of studying and analyzing it, to invent or learn something new. In proofreading, all the statements are checked and read once again, so that description can be made more generalized and descriptive for targeting wide range of audience.
- Grammar: The use of grammar laws must be done in such a way that the sentences depict precise and unambiguous data. Proofreading helps in reviewing grammatical errors and removing them, to make sentences and their meaning, more clear and convenient for the audience to understand.
- Terminology: It is important to be elaborative and at the same time, not getting away from the technical aspects of the invention. Technical specifications and language jargons must not be excluded from the writing. Since specifications must not be altered, otherwise literal meaning of the invention can change; it is must to be careful while writing them. Proofreading allows proper checking of terminology and technical terms, when the whole invention is described in one compiled document.
- Drawing: Technical drawings are the core element while filing patent application, since it serves as a shortcut to learn about the specifications and understand the functionalities. Sometimes, drawings become too complex while making up, which makes it difficult to understand, increasing its chances for rejection. Proofreading allows in reviewing the specifications, technical details, clarity in drawings, and use of good quality ink and sheets on which drawings are made.
Also refer to Patent Drawings: Key Points to Remember for better understanding of patent drawings.
- References: It is important to cross verify the stated references and to check for the ‘already defined’ patent content, at the end of drafting, since it will help in identifying the missing references and references which are no longer required.
- Standards: Proofreading is important to check whether the application follow patent standards according to the territorial area, in which the patent is going to get filed. It helps in checking whether all the standards according to legal laws, language grammar, use of certain quality of page and standards related to page margin and writing, are constantly followed across the whole application or not.
- Reliability verification: It is important to understand that whether the way or the criteria in which application is stated, is reliable or not. Proofreading helps in determining the same, by checking for its industrial applicability, one more time, so that any changes which are required can be easily made after drafting.
We are delighted to help you!
Our team, at The Patent Proofreading Company (TPPC) focuses on providing the best patent proofreading essentials services to our esteemed clients according to their requirements. We try to mitigate risk, manage consistency, removing delicacy, and errors from claims and specifications, with the help of latest technology to provide them with the industry’s most wide-ranging proofreading services.
- We analyze the bibliographic information of the issued patent and compare it with its prosecution history, to assure that the information inside the issued patent is appropriate and unique.
- We analyze and check all the drawings inside the issued patent after considering all the replacement sheets as the final submitted sheets, to assure that no glitches are left behind even in drawings.
- We analyze and compare every ‘Specification as issued’ with every ‘Specification as filed’ information to be sure that all the amendments for specification are included in the issued patent.
- We also analyze and compare the claims of the issued patents according to the examiner amendments, etc.
We constantly follow our multi-step quality check and quality assurance process that leverages our deep industry experience to provide the most cost-effective patent proofreading solution. To know more about us, please visit The Patent Proofreading Company.
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