Compare Every Version of a Claim with the Patent Workbench™ Reader Claims Matrix
Don’t you wish you had a way to be able to see the entire history of each claim within a patent prosecution history without having to manually prepare all of that work yourself?
The Claims Matrix tab within the Patent Workbench™ Reader allows you to see every iteration of every claim throughout the patent prosecution history–side by side and with text comparison notation. This allows you to see how a specific claim changed over the course of the prosecution with the convenience of having the original document (such as the Application or an Amendment) one click away. The table format of the Claims Matrix tab facilitates your analysis in an easy to understand manner.
Read more after the jump for an explanation of how the Claims Matrix works!
On the table, each row designates a single claim number and each column designates a single paper in the file history. The papers are displayed in reverse chronological order. This means, the patent claims (if applicable) are shown in the first, or left-most, column on the table and the application claims are displayed in the last, or right-most column, on the table. Depending on the number of papers in the file, you may have to scroll horizontally to see the earlier papers.
The default Claims Matrix view shows all versions of a claim side-by-side.
From here, you can click on “Add Comparisons” to get the following view…
Two versions of the same claim shown side by side with the comparison between them on the row below.
The column headers appear in blue text and are underlined. These headers are links that, when clicked, will open the selected paper in the .PDF of the file history, using the embedded PDF viewer. There’s no need to try and have multiple documents open at once and try to keep your place–the Patent Workbench™ Reader does it for you.
When a number appears in parentheses next to a patent claim number (left-most column) this indicates that the claim is dependent upon another claim. Numbers with parentheses denote the claim to which the claims in question depends. It can be an independent claim or another dependent claim.
The left column shows the patent claim number and indicates if the claim is dependent or not. This example shows that Claim 22 is dependent on Claim 1.
There are several presentation options available to you, to suit whatever claims analysis needs you might be facing. The Claims Matrix can be loaded with:
- All Claims – this is the default view. When chosen, this filter loads the Claims Matrix with all versions of every claim.
- All Claims (sorted by dependency) – When chosen, this filter loads the Claims Matrix with all claims in order of dependency.
- Patent Claims – When chosen, this filter loads the Claims Matrix with only claims that appear on the patent. Any cancelled claims will be excluded.
- Patent Claims (sorted by dependency) – When chosen, this filter loads the Claims Matrix with only claims that appear on the patent in order of dependency. Any cancelled claims will be excluded
- Independent Patent Claims only – When chosen, this filter loads the Claims Matrix with only independent claims that appear on the patent.
The Patent Workbench™ Reader also provides a tool that allows you to create a chain of dependency for the claims in the file history and load the Claims Matrix with a particular claim’s dependencies only. The operation of this helpful feature is as simple as clicking on the Chain of Dependency button, expanding/collapsing the claims tree as you prefer, and selecting the appropriate claim.
The Chain of Dependency selection displays a claims tree. A selection of a dependent claim will build the Claims Matrix to include the appropriate independent claims.
This claim tree view can also be used to handily export and save the claims tree itself.
Other highly requested features of the Claims Matrix include the ability to add and view notes on any specific claim within the Claims Matrix, and the ability to export and save the currently displayed Claims Matrix or the previously discussed chain of dependency.
Head over to the Request page and request a sample file to get the Patent Workbench™ Reader and the Claims Matrix tool today!
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