The Importance of Claims in Protecting Patents from the Perspective of the "long-distance kissing artifact" Patent

Author: Zhao Liheng, Gaowo Patent Agent

The Guiding Case No. 55 published by the Supreme People's Court points out the following judgment points: the scope of protection of a patent right should be clear. If there are obvious flaws in the wording of the claims, combined with the patent specification, drawings, common knowledge in the field, and relevant existing technology, the specific meaning of the technical terms in the claims cannot be determined, resulting in a clear and unclear scope of protection of the patent right. Therefore, it cannot be determined that the accused infringing technical solution constitutes infringement because it cannot be compared with the accused infringing technical solution in a substantial infringement.

That is to say, the claims, which are the most essential part of the patent application documents, are of great significance for defining the rights after patent authorization; Moreover, during the patent examination process, the examiner will also examine the defects in the claims that lack necessary technical features, which will also affect the patent authorization;

Today, the long-distance kissing tool went on various hot searches. Tianyancha shows that there are already applications related to remote kissing patents. A college in Changzhou once applied for a patent for a remote kissing device.

Below, the author objectively analyzes claim 1 of this real case of remote kissing device:

Claim 1 of the remote kissing device states: 1 A remote kissing device, characterized by comprising a lip component, a pressure detection and transmission mechanism, a central device (11), a power component, and a remote interconnected mobile phone software. The lip component is set on a housing (18), and the pressure detection and transmission mechanism, central device (11), and power component are set inside the housing (18). The lip component is connected to the central device (11) through the pressure detection and transmission mechanism, and the power component is connected to the central device (11) to provide power to the central device (11). The central device (11) is connected to the remote interconnected mobile phone software through a blue tooth.;

And according to its beneficial effects, the present invention achieves remote long-distance kissing by using a kissing device in conjunction with remote interconnected mobile phone software, providing real-time feedback on the kissing intensity of both parties, improving the user experience, and solving the inconvenience of long-distance dating. Therefore, it can be seen that it aims to achieve the technical effect of remote and real-time feedback on kissing intensity. Looking back at the features of claim 1, the central device (11) is connected to the remote interconnected mobile phone software through Bluetooth and the lip component is connected to the central device (11) through a pressure detection transmission mechanism. It can be seen that the central device (11) is connected to the remote interconnected mobile phone software through Bluetooth as a specific control method, which can achieve remote function. However, due to the embodiment of Bluetooth as a specific connection method, So it caused it to lose the protection range of other connection methods; The pressure detection transmission mechanism is a relatively vague functional name. Based on common knowledge, technicians in this field can conclude that the pressure detection function can be achieved through components similar to pressure sensors. As for how to achieve the pressure transmission function, it cannot be known solely through the vague functional name; That is to say, the technical solution disclosed in claim 1 does not fully achieve the claimed technical effect, that is, claim 1 lacks necessary technical features;

When responding during the patent examination process, in order to achieve both pressure detection and pressure transmission functions and achieve the technical goal of real-time feedback on kissing strength, after analyzing the application documents, all or part of the technical features of dependent claim 3 can only be combined into claim 1. However, since the technical features of claim 3 are all specific lower level technical features, in order to compensate for the above defects, it will have to face the problem of excessive narrowing of the protection scope caused by specific lower level technical features. If the later product is launched, competitors will easily avoid patent infringement;

In order to avoid the occurrence of the above problems, patent agents need to have a comprehensive understanding of the technical solution, clarify the necessary technical features required to solve the problem, and adopt a step-by-step approach to writing all claims, so as to make the scope of independent claims written large and reasonable; The scope of dependent claims is gradually narrowing, providing comprehensive protection instead of directly reducing to the minimum scope, to avoid the problem of losing the scope of protection and patent rights being easily avoided when subsequent claims are modified;

Conclusion: The writing of patent claims is of great significance for protecting enterprise patents, as it not only affects the rapid authorization of patents, but also affects the scope of protection and the difficulty of safeguarding rights after patent authorization. So, companies must find professional agencies to handle patent writing and application matters, in order to avoid any impact on subsequent patent authorization and protection due to improper patent application documents.