Patent application

The whole application text must be typed or printed on one side only of white A4 paper with margins of at least 2.5 cm on the left-handed side and 2 cm on all other sides. You should apply 1.5 lines spacing, the fonts should not be smaller than 0.21 cm (typically the 12-points font size). Each sheet of paper must be numbered within the area of type, but below or above the margin. A description, claims and an abstract must be typed or printed on separate sheets of paper. Furthermore, lines within the area of type are to be numbered, typically in the sequence of five.

Description

The title of the description should in general terms describe the subject of your invention, for instance “Procedure for ...”. Thus, the description usually begins with the expression “This invention relates to...”.

This is followed by the description of the state of technology, possibly including references to existing patents (“Such procedure is described in DE 4321335”). After the basic description of the state of technology, the disadvantages are presented, for instance by means of the expression “These procedures … have however some disadvantages such as…”.

Then, the task which the invention is going to fulfil is presented: “The task of the invention is to develop a procedure as described above by ...”.

The description of the solution of the task follows, which can be formulated as follows: “This task is solved in connection with the generic part of the 1st claim by means of characteristics of the 1st claim.”

The description of the solution of the task is followed by the presentation of advantages which can be achieved by solving the patent claim: “The procedure behind the invention has the advantage that …”.

Then, analogous solutions and further advantages are presented for the so-called subclaims: “A favourable extension of the object of the invention is supposed to…” or “a special realisation of the object of invention is ...”.

Examples

The abovementioned paragraphs constitute the so-called introductory part of the specification, which is followed by a detailed explanation and a so-called figure description: “Any further details of the invention are presented by means of figures. Figure 1 contains a schematic representation of …; figure 2 – of …; figure 3 – of … .

Then, individual figures are described: “Figure 1 shows the first step of …” or “Figure 2 shows a detail of Figure 1, i.e. a procedure to…”.

Drawings may not contain any textual information, instead the elements should be numbered consecutively by means of Arabic numbers. Consequently, you must take care to include each of these Arabic numbers in the description.

Claims

Claims should clearly define the essential technical features of your invention. Claims should be typed or printed on a separate sheet of paper numbered „1”. They should contain the “generic part” and the essential components thereof. The “the generic part” must contain the known information and the characterizing part – the new, innovative information. The generic part bearing the heading “Patent claims” might for instance be started with the following sentence: “The procedure to … can be characterized by…”. The phrase “characterised by” is followed by the characterising part and proceeded by the known information.

All Arabic reference numbers, which must be contained in the drawings and assigned to a particular term in the description, must also be quoted in brackets in the patent claims, as long as the term is explained in the patent claims, too.

It is recommended to have an attorney-at-law or a patent attorney draft or revise at least the patent claims if not the whole patent application.

Abstract

An abstract is a brief summary of your invention. It is introduced with the expression: „The invention is concerned with the procedure...” followed by the introductory sentence from the description. The abstract aims at presenting briefly the advantages of your invention. It must not contain more than 150 words and should bear the heading „Abstract”.