The importance of claims for the protection of patents

Abstract

The work examines the function of claims in delimiting the scope of protection conferred by the patent. It analyses the functional purpose and the content of claims, distinguishing product claims — which gather the physical parameters of the object — from process claims, which comprise the steps of performance, and addresses their interpretation together with the description and the drawings, drawing on the Portuguese Industrial Property Code, the TRIPS Agreement and the European Patent Convention. It examines the territorial scope, the temporal scope — a term of twenty years from the date of filing, under Article 99 of the CPI, Article 33 of TRIPS and Article 63(1) of the EPC, with extension for medicinal and plant protection products — and the objective scope of protection. The text holds that the non-literal interpretation of claims, together with the description and the drawings, and the inclusion of variants within the scope of protection correspond to the fair protection provided for in the Protocol on the Interpretation of Article 69 of the EPC, affording greater legal certainty to the proprietor in the face of literal and non-literal infringement.