Well known patent attorney Hal Milton recently published a new article in John Marshall’s Review of Intellectual Property Law (RIPL) that argues for the presentation of a “new result” within every patent application. The majority of newly drafted patent applications do not follow Milton’s approach and instead seem to obscure the innovative elements of the claimed invention and fail to identify the problem being solved by the invention. Milton writes:
Fifty years of examining, drafting, and prosecuting patents, including the patent at issue in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., coupled with the KSR opinion and the lessons therefrom, led the author herein to the objective standard of a new result. Inventors should be counseled that a new result should be sought out to justify the exclusive right of a patent.
Milton’s approach builds upon Paul Cole’s 2008 post-KSR article also published in RIPL. In that article, Cole reiterated that that evidence showing a new result is “necessary” under the European Patent Convention (EPC).
Milton’s approach also complements Ron Slusky’s approach to claim drafting that focuses a claim drafter’s attention first on the problem being solved by the invention. A major difference, however, is that Slusky does not explicitly advocate identifying the new result as part of the application itself.
Milton again:
In addition to identifying the new result or function to justify the exclusive right
of a patent, … that new result [should be] systematically recited throughout all sections of a patent application. Because a court may interpret a patent based upon the intrinsic patent alone, without regard to extrinsic evidence presented in advocacy outside the patent document, extreme care should be exercised in preparing the original patent application with consistency throughout. It is important to realize that patent offices, for the most part, grant patents based upon claims whereas the courts enforce patents based upon the entire patent.
