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Definiteness And Particularity In Patent Claims, William Redin Woodward

Michigan Law Review

To the uninitiated the professional jargon of patents, and particularly of patent claims, is somewhat mystifying even in the most ordinary cases. The profession likes to define the elements of apparatus as "means" for this, "means" for that and "means" for the other. Words like "plurality," "predetermined" and "comminuted" find remarkably frequent use by patent attorneys. And the habit of using out-of-the-way verbiage may lead the practitioner by force of habit to pass over a simple term like "sleeping car" in favor of a more elaborate phrase like "a communal vehicle for the dormitory accommodation of nocturnal viators." But it …