A patent is a technical and legal document for economic purposes. It is a technical document because it describes a technological advance, a legal document because it defines rights for its holder, and an economic document because it generates effects in a specific market.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe extent of the protection conferred by the patent will be determined by the content of the claims<\/u>, interpreted based on the descriptive report and drawings.\u201d <\/em>(article 41 of the Industrial Property Law \u2013 Law 9279 of 14\/05\/1996)<\/p>\n Anyone who has ever faced the arduous task of preparing a patent application is aware of the difficulty of drafting claims with a scope that is consistent with the invention. Less restrictive wording of the claims, that is, using more open terms, tends to broaden the scope of patent protection, even going beyond the invention. Conversely, claims with more closed wording, with more precise terms, make the scope of patent protection very restrictive, making it easily circumventable.<\/p>\n In addition to the rules for drafting claims, article 25 of the LPI provides the following guidance: \u201cAs reivindica\u00e7\u00f5es dever\u00e3o ser fundamentadas no relat\u00f3rio descritivo, characterizing the particularities of the request and defining, in a clear and precise manner, the subject matter of protection<\/u>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In this sense, the Patent Examination Guidelines \u2013 Block I (INPI Ordinance 16, published on 09\/02\/2024) in topic 3.36 thus complement the concepts of clarity and precision of claims: \u201cThe clarity of the claims is of fundamental importance, since they define the subject matter of protection. Thus, the meaning of the terms of the claims should be clear to a person skilled in the art from the wording of the claim<\/u>, based on the descriptive report and drawings, if any.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The aforementioned Patent Examination Guidelines in their topic 3.42 clarify the need for technical sufficiency: \u201cUma reivindica\u00e7\u00e3o independente must specify all the essential characteristics necessary to define the invention<\/u>…\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Since the claims must be interpreted based on the descriptive report, it is worth remembering the requirement of article Art. 24 of the LPI: \u201cThe report must clearly and sufficiently describe the object, so as to enable it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art<\/u> and indicate, when applicable, the best form of execution.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n From the interpretation of the above rules it can be concluded that the claims must meet the following conditions:<\/p>\n Therefore, the claims must undoubtedly determine what the effective limits of the protection generated by the patent are, aiming to:<\/p>\n In short, if the claims do not clearly and precisely characterize the particularities of the invention and the subject matter of protection allows, for example, executions below or beyond the invention, there will inevitably be uncertainty as to the real scope of patent protection and the consequent risk of legal uncertainty. Such a situation generates uncertainties that may cause harm to both parties: (i) to society with an undue restriction of the market and (ii) to the patent holder who may not succeed in legal efforts to prevent the free use of his invention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n by Luiz Alberto Rosenstengel \u2013 Partner at Le\u00e3o, Mechanical Engineer and Industrial Property Agent.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A patente \u00e9 um documento t\u00e9cnico e jur\u00eddico para fins econ\u00f4micos. \u00c9 um documento t\u00e9cnico porque descreve um avan\u00e7o tecnol\u00f3gico, jur\u00eddico porque define direitos ao seu titular e econ\u00f4mico porque gera efeitos no mercado espec\u00edfico. \u201cA extens\u00e3o da prote\u00e7\u00e3o conferida pela patente ser\u00e1 determinada pelo teor das reivindica\u00e7\u00f5es, interpretado com base no relat\u00f3rio descritivo e […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leao-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10246,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245\/revisions\/10246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leao.adv.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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