PatentBrief
← Glossary/C

Claim construction

Definition

The legal process of interpreting what a patent claimclaimA numbered sentence at the end of a patent that legally defines what the inventor owns. The most important section.Read more → means — specifically, the scope of each term in the claim. In litigationlitigationA lawsuit over patent infringement. Litigated patents often signal commercial importance.Read more →, judges perform claim constructionclaim constructionThe legal process of interpreting what a patent claim means — usually decided by the judge in a Markman hearing.Read more → in a "Markman hearing" before deciding infringementinfringementMaking, using, selling, or importing a patented invention without permission from the patent holder.Read more →. Claim construction is often the most consequential step in patent litigation: a narrow construction can defeat infringement, while a broad one can invalidate the claim.

Related terms

Keep going

Claim

The numbered sentences at the end of a patent that define exactly what is legally protected. Claims are the only part of a patent that determine infringement — if a product or process doesn't fall within the scope of at least one claim, there is no infringement. Every other part of a patent (abstract, drawings, specification) exists to support and illuminate the claims.

Claim chart

A side-by-side comparison table mapping each element of a patent claim to a specific feature in an accused product or prior art reference. Claim charts are used in infringement analysis, licensing negotiations, and patent litigation. They make it visually clear which claim elements are met (or not met) by the thing being compared.

Continuation

A new patent application filed while a parent application is still pending, using the same specification but with different (usually narrower or broader) claims. Continuations allow inventors to pursue multiple rounds of claims from one original disclosure. Many technology companies maintain families of ten or more continuations from a single core invention, each covering a different aspect.

Continuation-in-part (CIP)

A type of continuation that adds new subject matter to the original specification. The original claims keep the parent's priority date; the new material gets a new priority date. CIPs are commonly used when an inventor has improved or expanded an invention after the original filing. The different priority dates within a CIP can create complications during litigation.

Abstract

A brief summary (300 words or fewer) that appears at the top of every patent. The abstract describes what the invention does in general terms. Legally, it has almost no weight — courts use the claims to determine what a patent covers, not the abstract. The abstract is useful mainly for quickly scanning patents during a prior art search.

Anticipation

A legal standard for rejecting a patent claim. If every element of a claim was already disclosed in a single prior art reference — in a patent, article, or product — the claim is "anticipated" and cannot be patented. Anticipation requires a single source to contain every element; if you need two sources, it's an obviousness argument, not anticipation.

See claim construction in real patents:

Search PatentBrief →