3.Preparation of specifications and claims for patent applications for inventions involving computer programs;
1) Writing of specifications;
In addition to describing the technical scheme of the invention as a whole, it is necessary to clearly and completely describe the design idea of the computer program and its technical characteristics as well as the implementation method to achieve its technical effect:The drawings attached to the specifications shall give the main flow chart of the computer program;On the basis of the given computer program flow, the steps of the computer program are described in natural language in chronological order, and the computer program that can achieve technical results can be prepared by the technical personnel in this field through flow charts and instructions;If necessary, some key parts of the computer source program can be briefly excerpted for reference in the usual markup language, but it is not necessary to submit the entire computer source program.
2) Writing of claims
A.It can be written as a method claim, or it can be written as a product claim that exactly corresponds to the method claim.The components of such product claims shall be understood as the functional modules that must be established to realize the steps of the procedure flow or method.A device claim bounded by such a set of functional modules shall be understood as an architecture of functional modules that implements the solution primarily through the computer program described in the specification, and not as a physical device that implements the solution primarily by means of hardware
B.For many computer program designers, however, it is more important to protect the program itself. If this kind of claim is protected only in the form of method claim, the patent may not be effectively protected in the subsequent litigation process due to the difficulty of selecting the litigation object and obtaining evidence.The functional module framework product claim is only a form of product protection for inventions that are wholly based on all computer process.However, this kind of computer program, more or less will involve other hardware devices in addition to the memory and processor, it is difficult to determine whether it is all based on the computer program process. Therefore, we improve this functional module structured product claim into a physical product claim.
