I often have to explain to
clients how the patent claim system
works. I’ve found this illustration
useful and I hope that you will too.
Suppose you had invented a
bicycle wheel like the one shown here.
However you had never seen another wheel and therefore in your claims you described the wheel concept itself as your invention, hoping to own all kinds of wheels.
However, in a prior art
search like we perform at BML, one of the first patents we uncovered was a
wheel like this one.
Okay—you cant own the wheel, but this wheel has no spokes, rim or tires. Perhaps we can change our claims to a spoked wheel with a tire.
Unfortunately, the next patent turned up by the search is a spoked wheel like the one below. However this wheel has no tire. It has a metal rim.
Now we are down to looking for a wheel that has a tire on it. Like the next piece of prior art we found
.



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