How to read patents

When reading patents, the most important part of a patent are the "claims". These are the ideas that are covered by the patent. The abstract of the patent is just a description. It's a common mistake to read the abstract as a summary - it is not a summary. The abstract just describes the domain in which the claims are situated.

Related pages on ESP Wiki

• Reading case law
• Searching for patents
• State of the art - and what is "prior art"?
• Design patents - which are not the same as normal patents
• Software patents are unreadable

External links

• Andrew Tridgell: Reading patents and building a legal defence, presentation transcript
• The Anatomy of a Trivial Patent, by Richard Stallman
• Dr. David Garrod's Glossaries of [USA] Judicial Claim Constructions Available Free of Charge