In Inpro v. T-Mobile, an applicant’s use of the phrase “very important feature” in the specification allowed the court to legitimately import the “important” limitation into the claims. That result prompted a resourceful, but anonymous Patently-O reader to do some quick analysis to figure out: who still uses phrases like “very important?” The answer: Lots of people.
The following table shows the percentage of patents using the terms “important” or “very important” by month over the past twenty years. As you can see, “important” features are alive and discussed in a significant number of applications.
|
Application Month |
“important” % |
“very important” % |
|
Jan 1985 |
23.5 |
1.65 |
|
Jan 1990 |
24.0 |
1.80 |
|
Jan 1995 |
28.3 |
1.82 |
|
Jan 2000 |
29.6 |
2.08 |
|
Jan 2001 |
27.5 |
1.80 |
|
Jan 2002 |
27.0 |
1.78 |
|
Jan 2003 |
24.4 |
1.95 |
|
Jan 2003* |
32.3 |
2.31 |
|
Jan 2004* |
31.4 |
2.21 |
*Data taken from published patent applications, which may or may not also have issued as patents.
Of course, there are times when it is useful to talk about a “very important” feature of the invention — such as if you are attempting to avoid known prior art. However, I would be cautious even on that point.
A few caveats to this data — some of these hits might be in the background saying “this problem is very important.” Some of them might also be saying it is “not very important.”
