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608.01(g) Detailed Description of Invention - 600 Parts, Form, and Content of Application
608.01(g) Detailed Description of Invention
A detailed description of the invention and drawings follows the general statement of invention and brief description of the drawings. This detailed description, required by 37 CFR 1.71, MPEP § 608.01, must be in such particularity as to enable any person skilled in the pertinent art or science to make and use the invention without involving extensive experimentation. An applicant is ordinarily permitted to use his or her own terminology, as long as it can be understood. Necessary grammatical corrections, however, should be required by the examiner, but it must be remembered that an examination is not made for the purpose of securing grammatical perfection.
The reference characters must be properly applied, no single reference character being used for two different parts or for a given part and a modification of such part. In the latter case, the reference character, applied to the given part, with a prime affixed may advantageously be applied to the modification. Every feature specified in the claims must be illustrated, but there should be no superfluous illustrations.
The description is a dictionary for the claims and should provide clear support or antecedent basis for all terms used in the claims. See 37 CFR 1.75, MPEP § 608.01(i), § 608.01(o), and § 1302.01.
For completeness, see MPEP § 608.01(p).
USE OF SYMBOL "Phi" IN PATENT APPLICATION
The Greek letter "Phi" has long been used as a symbol in equations in all technical disciplines. It further has special uses which include the indication of an electrical phase or clocking signal as well as an angular measurement. The recognized symbols for the upper and lower case Greek Phi characters, however, do not appear on most typewriters. This apparently has led to the use of a symbol composed by first striking a zero key and then backspacing and striking the "cancel" or "slash" key to result in an approximation of accepted symbols for the Greek character Phi. In other instances, the symbol is composed using the upper or lower case letter "O" with the "cancel" or "slash" superimposed thereon by backspacing, or it is simply handwritten in a variety of styles. These expedients result in confusion because of the variety of type sizes and styles available on modern typewriters.
In recent years, the growth of data processing has seen the increasing use of this symbol ("Ø") as the standard representation of zero. The "slashed" or "canceled" zero is used to indicate zero and avoid confusion with the upper case letter "O" in both text and drawings.
Thus, when the symbol "Ø" in one of its many variations, as discussed above, appears in patent applications being prepared for printing, confusion as to the intended meaning of the symbol arises. Those (such as examiners, attorneys, and applicants) working in the art can usually determine the intended meaning of this symbol because of their knowledge of the subject matter involved, but editors preparing these applications for printing have no such specialized knowledge and confusion arises as to which symbol to print. The result, at the very least, is delay until the intended meaning of the symbol can be ascertained.
Since the Office does not have the resources to conduct a technical editorial review of each application before printing, and in order to eliminate the problem of printing delays associated with the usage of these symbols, any question about the intended symbol will be resolved by the editorial staff of the Office of Patent Publication by printing the symbol Ø whenever that symbol is used by the applicant. Any Certificate of Correction necessitated by the above practice will be at the patentee's expense ( 37 CFR 1.323) because the intended symbol was not accurately presented by the Greek upper or lower case Phi letters in the patent application.
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