ClaimMaster can check your documents for various stylistic issues and appearance of certain phrases or keywords that could be problematic. These phrases are commonly referred to as “patent profanities” and normally include limiting terms, such as “invention”, “must”, “always”, “required”, “necessary” and other phrases that could limit the scope of your claims during patent litigation. ClaimMaster’s patent proofreading rules that flag “patent profanities” are editable, so that you can enforce your own drafting guidelines or check for the presence of specific phrases/words that are disallowed by your clients.
To check the document for various stylistic issues, perform the following steps:
- Run the check for stylistic issues and “patent profanities”
In ClaimMaster Ribbon, click on the Individual Proofing Tools menu, then select Check Document Text for Stylistic Errors/Patent Profanities:
- Review identified stylistic issues and used “patent profanities”
Once you click this option, ClaimMaster will check your Word document based on the specified rules (see below for configuring your own rules/keyword lists) and bring up a report of all identified issues. In the opened window, each report message is clickable. When you click on each message, you will be able expand it to show the related terms for the issue.
In addition, the same “patent profanities” report is also available from the All-In-One Reports, when they are run in “Comprehensive” mode either for claims or the entire specification.
- Quickly add/edit keyword lists (Optional)
ClaimMaster also lets you quickly edit existing “patent profanity” rules or create new ones. This is especially helpful if you need to perform different “patent profanity” checks for different clients. Wildcards are also supported. To launch quick edit of keyword rules, from Individual Proofing Tools menu, select Check Document for Stylistic Issues/Patent Profanities ->Edit/Add Keyword Rules for the Document:
Note that the same rule editing option is also available using the Preferences->Patent Proofreading->Quick Edit (Configure Text Rules) button.
- Edit or add new keyword rules (Optional)
Once you launch the quick keyword rule option, a window will open that will allow you to add new keyword rules or edit existing keyword rules. You’ll be able to specify a list of keywords/phases that will be searched in the document. You can use wildcard * to find all variants of a particular word. Each new phase or keyword should start on a new line. You’ll also be able to add/edit rule name and a warning message for each rule.
For more information on quickly editing keyword rules, please click here.
In general, if you’d like to adjust or modify the rules used by ClaimMaster, you can also click on Configure Rules button, as explained in more detail here.
For more information on this feature, check out the Online Manual.
You can read more about “patent profanities” in this article.