Hi, Why 'a plurality of N' or 'the plurality of N' must be used fo 'N' in patent claims?
What is the difference between them?
I found all patents I have checked if a number N (>0, or >1) is used, 'a plurality of N' or 'the plurality of N' must be used.
I checked with English disctionanry and still don't get any clue.
Thank you.
Weng
Because patents are written to be legal documents, not engineering documents. Legal documents are written using traditions that have evolved over hundreds of years. Since patent examiners, lawyers, and judges all expect patents to be written in a certain way, if you submit an application that isn't written that way, you're just wasting money.
Hi Robert, It is interesting to note that the styles for patent writing are changing with time.
In old patents, 'said' was used for 'the'.
Now I found in more patents approved in 2005, they only use 'the', never use 'said'.
It is very often now that a full sentence usually follows the 'wherein', instead of many separate words followed by descriptive words.
Thank you.
Weng
Again, that is what i call "patent-ese". Instead of "many" or "multiple" one sees "a plurality of". Like i said, follow the terminology and useage that you find in other patents that are closely related to your particular idea.
Legalese is designed to keep lawyers employed. It is not, by itself, "precise". Contracts and other legal documents written in "plain English" are just as enforceable as the legalese version. Maybe even more so, because a jury (non-lawyers) can understand them.
MOOYMMV.
Tom Seim
Legalese is a very precise language, quite comparable to computer languages. If you ever see "...time is of the essence..." in a contract, prepare to run.
-- Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millenium http://www.theconsensus.org
Perhaps, but the question pertains to terminology in patents.
You are forgetting that, by the very nature of the beast, Patents are designed to be as general as possible without seeming to digress onto other topics... like this thread.
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languages.
run.
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