United States:
Means Plus Function Claiming: What Does It Mean To Be A Means, When Are Means Means, And Other Meaningful Questions
29 April 2016
Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP
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The concepts of indefiniteness and functional language have been
entangled for a very long time. Indeed, it was this complicated
interplay that lead to the eventual statutory inclusion of a
"means-plus-function" section in the 1952 Patent Act.
But, long before the middle of the twentieth century, the American
patent system had grappled with issues related to functional
claiming and balancing those issues against the public need to know
the extent of a patent's reach. It is not known when the first
modern means-plus-function claim was patented, but it is generally
known that this claim format was commonly used in the nineteenth
century. In this article, Finnegan attorney
Eric P. Raciti discusses the history of means-plus-function
claiming and its place in the patent system.
Previously published in Landslide
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