The Interpretation Of Functional Claim

With the rapid development of the science and technology,functional claim has grown to be the important way of writing in current application for a patent."Functional characteristics" as a qualitative composition of functional claim,plays an extremely important role.Functional claim explanation has there steps: including the judgment of functional characteristics and functional claim's legality,as well as all the technical features coverage of functional claim's demarcation.But in fact,the judgment of functional characteristics and functional claim's legality,as well as the interpretation of the rules of functional characteristics are different in the examining procedure,invalidation proceedings and judicial procedure.This phenomenon made the protection scope vast different.This is not only unconducive to maintaining the stability of patent right,but also is unfavorable to clear the scope of protection of the patent right.But the means of interpretation in academia and practice session is also different.The explanation method in overseas is not consistent,too.So this article tries to use the balance of interests as a starting point to seek a reasonable way for our country to solve the uncomfortable phenomen.This article is divided into five parts:The first chapter: Introduction,also the preface part of this article.The chapter will give a brief introduction of the application of functional claim,introduce the explanation rule of functional characteristics in existing views,and give the research contents and methods of this article.The second chapter: Overview of functional claim.This chapter will introduce functional claim and its related concept: including the patent claim,specification and the rules to explain scope of patent;the concept of functional claim,and its background and present development in our country.The third chapter: The interpretation of functional claim in our country.This chapter will focus on the interpretation of functional claim in the examining procedure,invalidation proceedings and judicial procedure in our country.By comparing the explanation in the three procedure,the chapter will sum up the problems of functional claim's explanation---the judgment of functional characteristics and functional claim's legality,as well as the interpretation of the rules of functional characteristics are different in the different procedure.This chapter will use the balancing of interests as the starting point,combine our country present functional claim explanation's problems with the reason for the existence of the explanation for the functional claim,and analysis the rationalisation of interpretation of functional claims in our country.The fourth chapter,The functional claim explanation method of overseas.This chapter focuses on the functional claim explanation method and comparison in the United States,the European Union and Japan three countries(organization)with our country,to find out which way is suitable for our country.The fifth chapter: The perfection of our country's functional claim explanation.This chapter will combine China's basic national conditions with the judgment of functional characteristics and functional claim's legality,as well as the interpretation of the rules of functional characteristics,to give the author's suggestions to meet the need of the development of our country.