Why 'a plurality of N' must be used for 'N' in patent claims

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Hi Tom, So, on this one I disagree with you. Legalese exists because it has terms that have been defined to have a strict meaning in case law. It's not much different to the jargon used by electronics engineers which has a precise meaning. Contracts written in (say) "plain English" are enforceable, but with a lot more effort as there will be no precedent. IMO ;-) Cheers, Syms.

Perhaps, but the question pertains to terminology in patents.

I once read about a (successful) lawsuit against a flying club. The issue was a liability waiver that used the phrase "bodily injury". Well, the poor guy was killed and his heirs argued in court that death was different from "bodily injury", and they won! In my mind death is just extreme bodily injury, but not, in this case, to the jury.

Tom

I am with the jury on this one. You can argue that anything from scrapes to loss of both legs to full paralysis from the neck down are instances of "bodily injury" but in my opinion there is a difference of quality between "DEAD" and any of those things which are again, in my opinion, differences of degree.

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.

Sim>

languages.

run.

Which is exactly my point: this contract was reviewed by lawyers for accuracy and they felt that "bodily injury" includes death. So much for legal "precision".

Tom