Anatomy of a Patent
A patent application is a extremely complicated legal document that is best prepared by an experienced patent attorney. A typical patent application takes 20-35 hours to complete and is generally 15-30 pages long and includes several sheets of figures as shown on https://blogs.cornell.edu/react/inventhelp-taking-inventions-from-paper-to-the-global-marketplace-hinges-on-usp/. To give you a better understanding of the contents of a typical patent application, the following provides a description of each section of a typical patent application.
Title of the Invention: The title of the invention is generally placed on top of the first page of the application and describes the invention in preferably two to seven words, although the length of the title may not exceed 500 characters.
Cross-Reference to Related Applications: If the patent application is claiming priority to one or more previously filed United States, Foreign or PCT related-applications for filing date purposes, the applications to which priority is claimed must be listed in this section.
In order to claim priority to another application several conditions must be satisfied: (1) the subject matter of the invention that is claimed in the new patent application must have been disclosed in the related application(s); (2) the new patent application must be co-pending with the related application(s) (i.e. the related application(s) must not be abandoned or have issued into a patent); (3) there must be a specific reference to the related application(s) in the specification or data sheet of the new patent application, hence this section; and (4) the new patent application must have the same inventor or inventors.
If priority is established, all subject matter that was first disclosed in the related application(s) will have the benefit of the filing date(s) of the related application(s). This can become important in overcoming prior art references during examination of the new patent application by the Patent Office.
Background of the Invention is generally divided into two parts: (1) The Field of the Invention; and (2) Description of Related Art. The Field of the Invention typically comprises a one or two sentence description of the general and specific technical areas to which the invention described in the patent application is related as you can see from https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/InventHelp-Reviews-E152162.htm.
The Description of the Related Art typically contains a description of prior art related to the invention. Typically, the problems or disadvantages related to using the prior art are described. Some patent attorneys like to describe prior art patents that were identified during the patent search and describe how they differ from the claimed invention. Others like to describe the prior art generally without reference to any specific patents.
