[responsivevoice_button]
A legal document that enforces all the rights of the invention in the name of the inventor is known as Patent. A patent includes claims and all other important information that reserves the rights of the inventor, in a way that no other individual or business can make use of that invention without the consent of the inventor. Patent proofreading means to check for errors, from a very minute spelling mistake to an invalid specification, in the complete patent application, to avoid application’s unnecessary rejection.
The mistakes can be of grammar, spelling, formatting, claim dependency, drawing, and illustration or even of claims with respect to the description. As a fact, the following statements have been stated by the USPTO after reviewing a set of 1600 patents, itself:
- 98% of the issued patents have mistakes
- 50% of them were made by USPTO
- 33% of mistakes need Certificate of Correction
- And, 2% of them were mistakes from the core sections of the application.
Presence of any sort of error could create a negative impact on the examiner; resulting in the rejection of an application, at the court stage. It is due to this reason patent proofreading is very important part of the patent lifecycle. And therefore, it is essential to proofread these errors and acquire a certificate of correction as soon as the patent proprietor comes across these mistakes to keep away from future losses.
What is Patent Proofreading and its Importance
Patent proofreading is an important part of the patent lifecycle, through which one can check for mistakes in the patent application, correct them all on time, to avoid unnecessary patent rejection and financial losses. While we file the patent application, there are a number of difficult aspects which are required to be filed correctly, before submitting it to the patent office for examination.
We use a lot of things, such as punctuations, spellings, paragraphs, technical jargon, patent claims, phrases, specifications, etc. which may or may not be equivalent to what the inventor wants from his work, or it may or may not possess that much power in writing to influence the targeted audience. Therefore, proofreading is a way from which it can be checked that whether the intended part is actually described and reflected in the application or not.
Sometimes, some crucial aspects may be missed, which can easily be added after proofreading. Therefore, to avoid any such issues can lead to rejection of application must be reviewed once again, so that it can be modified or corrected before presenting it in front of the patent examiner. And hence, it must be made a compulsion to proofread the application after drafting, since it will save the cost, time and efforts of the inventor and as well the patent examiner, and will ensure greater chances of getting a patent.
We are also providing a link to an article where you will get to learn about the elements of patent proofreading.
Our team at the Patent Drafting Catalyst (PDC), checks for the following mistakes in an application:
- Ensures that the prior art references on the first-page match against the ones present in the disclosure statement.
- Ensures that all the reference characters in the description are also present in the drawings
- Checks for all grammatical and spelling mistakes
- Identify applicant errors, particularly those that are (unintentionally) introduced while complying with office actions
- Identify and fix antecedent basis errors in claims
- Verify for the correctness of the Continuity and Bibliographic information of the patent for its consistencies.
- Provide a feedback report to our clients stating all the mistakes and the possible remedies, along with the Certificate of Correction (CoC), if required.
The PDC Assistance
We at the Patent Drafting Catalyst (PDC), provides the industry’s most exclusive patent proofreading service, comprising of both automated software-based approach as well as an expert team to perform significantly on a manual basis.
Some of our basic services for patent proofreading are:
- Verification of the Title, inventor’s details, Continuing data and priority information, Assignee, PCT data, terminal disclaimer, examiner’s details (primary and assistant), drawings and related amendments, and color drawings (if any).
- Verification of all prior art references on the front page against those cited in the disclosure statements
- Verification that all the reference characters mentioned in the description are present in the drawings, as well
- Checking for spelling and grammatical mistakes
- Verification of the claim set
Once, the verification and validation of the complete application are done, we provide a feedback report to our customers, that includes a copy of the assembled patent, mistakes according to the level of severity, and also a certification of correction if requested.
For further assistance or any query on our patent proofreading services, please visit our service page.
