Innovation and Rights - Developing Biomedical Devices: Design, Innovation and Protection - page 19

A claim is a statement that defines the scope of the requested protection or
simply a sentence that defines the technical elements that make up the invention
(using words or technical terms which are a generalization of the original elements
to achieve the broadest possible legal protection).
A claim must, of course, meet the patentability requirements (novelty, inven-
tive step), be clear, concise and supported by the description (which means that the
description should be the basis for the claimed subject matter and a claim cannot
have a broader scope than what is described, represented in the figures and known
from the state of the art).
But, at the same time, a claim must include everything that is an obvious modi-
fication or an equivalent (means which perform the same function, basically in the
same way to achieve the same result), as well as all embodiments which show the
same properties or uses.
A claim can be compared with a fence delimiting the owned land: it should
clearly define the border of the owned land (the designed innovative solution),
avoiding trespassing on the property of others (previous patents both in force or
expired) or public property (non-proprietary, public-domain solutions).
The claims define the scope of patent protection [ 21 ]; they can be claims con-
cerning products, processes, pharmaceutical composition, uses.
Box 2. Example of claims (tree structure — PCT patent application No. WO
2006/106429)
1. A method for the deposition of steel on at least one surface por-
tion of a nitride metallic element characterized in that it comprises a
phase (a) releasing nitrogen from at least one surface portion of said
nitride metallic element and a phase (b) depositing at least one layer
of molten metal on at least one surface portion of said nitride metallic
element.
2. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that said method com-
prises repeating said phase (a) various times in order to reduce or in any
case greatly limit the presence of nitrogen inside said at least one surface
portion of said nitride metallic element.
3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that said phase
(a) comprises a phase (c) melting said at least one surface portion of said
metallic element by means of a heat source.
4. The method according to claim 3, characterized in that said heat source
is a laser source susceptible to melting said at least one surface portion of
said nitride metallic element.
5. The method according to any of the claims from 1 to 4, characterized
in that it comprises a phase (d) processing said at least one steel layer
deposited with tool machines.