Flowchart templates

Configuring flowchart + description templates

To edit flowchart + description templates, perform the following steps inside the Patent Drafting Preferences window:

Select one of the configured flowchart templates and then click on the Edit button in the lower right corner of the preferences window (if you don't have any such templates configured or need to make a copy, create a new one using the Add or Duplicate buttons shown above):

Edit the selected flowchart template settings, then click on Accept Edits to save:

Specifies the name of the flowchart template that is being edited
Specifies the preferred description for the flowchart (either "method" or "process").
Specifies the intro section of the flowchart section. It will be inserted only once at the very beginning of the flowchart before the portion that is generated from claims. This section can contain various text annotations, objects and variables. The following replacement fields are supported:

[FIG#] - specifies figure number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 6).
[PROC#] - specifies the process number. This field will be replaced with the value automatically calculated by ClaimMaster based on the specified figure number -e.g., 100 for Fig. 1, 300 for Fig. 3, and so on. (see item 6 in Flowchart tool).
[PREAMBLE] - specifies a placeholder for the preamble language - to be automatically populated by ClaimMaster based on the preamble extracted from the selected claim.

Specifies the conclusion section of the flowchart section. It will be inserted only once at the very end of the flowchart immediately after the portion that is generated from claims. This section can contain various text annotations, objects and variables. The following replacement fields are supported:

[FIG#] - specifies figure number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 6).
[PROC#] - specifies the process number. This field will be replaced with the value automatically calculated by ClaimMaster based on the specified figure number -e.g., 100 for Fig. 1, 300 for Fig. 3, and so on. (see item 6 in Flowchart tool).
[PREAMBLE] - specifies a placeholder for the preamble language - to be automatically populated by ClaimMaster based on the preamble extracted from the selected claim.

Specifies replacements for various legal terms within the claims to more standard terms that can be further used to improve the generated text readability. The search term and the replacement term must be separated with a semi-colon. These fields support regular expressions for matching terms. For example:

"further comprising;may include" - any instance of "further comprising" in the claims will be replaced with "may include".
"consist\w*;may include" - all variants of the term starting with "consist" (i.e., consist, consists, consisting, etc.) will be replaced with "may include".

Independent Claim Conversion Settings - switch to the Independent Claim Settings tab:

This field specifies the template for converting each limitation of each independent claim to the final format for the flowchart description. The following replacement fields are supported:

[ADVERB] - can be inserted in the inside each limitation (starting with the 2nd one) to improve the flow and readability of the generated text, especially when the claim contains many limitations that need to be connected together.
[FIG#] - specifies figure number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 6).
[PROC#] - specifies the process number. This field will be replaced with the value automatically calculated by ClaimMaster based on the specified figure number -e.g., 100 for Fig. 1, 300 for Fig. 3, and so on. (see item 6 in Flowchart tool).
[STEP#] - specifies a placeholder for the specific step # that will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (based on the values specified in item 7).
[DEVICENAME] - specifies the device name to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 16).
[DEVICE#] - specifies the device number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 17).
[LIM_CHANGED] - specifies limitation in the conjugated form that is optimized for insertion using natural-language processing techniques. Preferred for independent claims.
[LIM_UNCHANGED] - inserts limitation in the non-conjugated form (i.e., without changes, as it appears in the claim). Preferred for dependent claims.

Specifies whether example language derived from each claim limitation is to be inserted when the flowchart description is generated. For example, if the field is set, the following will be inserted:

Specifies a list of conjunctive adverbs to be used for the [ADVERB] placeholder. Adverbs in the list should be separated by a semicolon. Adverts can be added starting with the 2nd limitation of the claim to improve readability/flow, especially when many claim limitations need to be connected together. Adverbs will be inserted in the order specified and when the end of the list is reached, it will restart from the 1st position. If you want to mix in a few sentences without adverbs to improve flow and readability, do not include adverbs between semicolons for those entries in the list, such as ";;"

For example, if the list is set to "also;further;;;in addition", then for the 2nd limitation, "also" will be used, for the 3rd limitation "further" will be used, no adverb will be used for the 4th and 5th limitations; then "in addition" will be used, and then ClaimMaster will circle back to "also" and so on.

Dependent Claim Conversion Settings - switch to the Dependent Claim Settings tab:

Specifies the template for the introduction inserted in the beginning of the dependent claim section. The following fields are supported:

[FIG#] - specifies figure number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 6).
[PROC#] - specifies the process number. This field will be replaced with the value automatically calculated by ClaimMaster based on the specified figure number -e.g., 100 for Fig. 1, 300 for Fig. 3, and so on. (see item 6 in Flowchart tool).

This field specifies the template for converting each limitation of each dependent claim to the final text that will be inserted following the intro section (item 1). The following replacement fields are supported:

[STEP#] - specifies a placeholder for the specific step # that will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (based on the values specified in item 7).
[DEVICENAME] - specifies the device name to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 16).
[DEVICE#] - specifies the device number to be used in the flowchart description. This field will be replaced with the value selected by the user in the Flowchart tool (item 17).
[LIM_CHANGED] - specifies limitation in the conjugated form that is optimized for insertion using natural-language processing techniques. Preferred for independent claims.
[LIM_UNCHANGED] - inserts limitation in the non-conjugated form (i.e., without changes, as it appears in the claim). Preferred for dependent claims.

If checked, ClaimMaster will also insert permutations of dependent claims in each of the dependent claim sections, which may be especially helpful for providing explicit support for flowcharts in European applications. For example: