Patenting is the process whereby a technical description of an invention is prepared and then filed at the Intellectual Property Office (formerly known as the Patent Office).

This technical description has to be written very carefully, and in such a way that an expert in the field of the invention can reproduce it.   The patent specification contains a description, which is supported by diagrams, contained in Figures, which are referred to from the description by use of the reference numbers and letters which appear in the Figures.  

It is important to realise that there needs to be as much detail  in the first filed patent specification as possible, since, whilst it is possible to remove material in freshly submitted patent applications up to the date of final submission of the definitive version  of the patent specification, that is at any time up to twelve months from the date of filing of the first patent specification, and whilst it also possible to remove material when submitting rearranged patent specifications according to the results of the Substantive Examination (which has to be requested at between 18 and 24 months measured from the date of the first filed patent application) you can only add material by way of filed, revised patent specifications, at up to twelve months from the date of filing of the first patent application.

The consequence of this is that, since any material present in a patent application filed by a third party, which is in competition with your intellectual property, is compared strictly on the basis of "who filed first", you need to "date-stamp" your intellectual property, via your patent application, as early as possible. 

Improved patent specifications, resulting from development of the initial invention, from acquired knowledge, and from searching for possible conflicting intellectual property (which can give rise to applied changes to the specification) invariably arise during the above mentioned twelve-month period, and these will be filed at the Intellectual Property Office.      My procedure is to put everything that is in the first filed patent specification, in the next filed one, together with the new material.

This process can be repeated as often as you wish, up to the time at which the patent application, containing the definitive version of the patent specification, is filed.

PATENTING

The Claims inform the Patent Examiner what it is that you are claiming to be new and novel about your invention, and thus form a sort of precis of the description, presented as a series of consecutively numbered paragraphs, so that the Examiner can more easily compare your intellectual property with that present in similar inventions.

THE DESCRIPTION

THE CLAIMS

The Abstract is a summary of the invention in no more than 150 words, which usually refers to a diagram chosen from the patent specification, using the reference numbers and letters in that diagram. 

THE ABSTRACT

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