210 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
when they may be infringing on your rights. The limits of this line are
dened by the words and phrasing of your claims.
Claims are usually in the form of a series of numbered expressions or,
more precisely, noun phrases following the description of the invention in a
patent or patent application, and dene, in technical terms, the extent of the
protection conferred by a patent or by a patent application. They are of the
utmost importance during both prosecution and litigation.
Ideally, each claim should have only one meaning, which can be either
broad or narrow, but not both at the same time. In general, a narrow
claim species more details than a broader claim. Having many claims,
where each one is a different scope, allows you to have legal title to
several aspects of your invention. Claims are the legal description of the
exclusive rights granted by the government to the inventor. There are two
basic types of claims: independent claims, which stand on their own,
and dependent claims, which refer to an earlier cited claim or several
claims and generally express particular embodiments as fallback posi-
tions. The expressions “in one embodiment,” “in a preferred embodi-
ment,” “in a particular embodiment,” “in an advantageous embodiment,”
or the like often appear in the description of patent applications and are
used to introduce a particular implementation or method of carrying out
the invention. These embodiments usually correspond to a dependent
claim or could form the basis of a dependent claim. Each dependent
claim is, by law, more narrowly dened than the independent claim upon
which it depends.
10.3.3 Claims Categories
Claims can also be classied into categories, that is, in terms of what they
claim. A claim can refer to:
◾ a physical entity, that is, a product (or material) or an apparatus (or
device, system, article, etc.). The claim is then called “product claim”
or “apparatus claim,” respectively
◾ an activity, that is, a process (or method) or a use. The claim is then
called “process claim” (or method claim) or “use claim,” respectively
Figure10.3 shows the claims of a recently issued U.S. patent. Note the
independent claim (#1) and all the other dependent claims.