Patent Office Examiners Can Use Just Unlabeled Drawings From a PriorArt Document To Reject Your Application
In developing a patent filing strategy, it can be prudent to utilize prior art searches to ensure that there is strategic value in the potential scope of coverage sufficient to warrant the investment in preparing and filing a new patent application. However, sometimes inventors can too easily dismiss prior art references by focusing on the details of the reference. A patent examiner can and will cite references for just a portion of what is disclosed, sometimes perhaps only using a drawing that happens to show a features that has nothing to do with the invention claimed in the patent document itself. In other words, while an inventor may dismiss the prior art document because it focuses/claims some specific features that is quite different from what the inventor considers to be their invention, patent examiners look at a reference for all that it discloses and do not dismiss a reference because of its focus/claims. In this way, as noted above, eve a patent drawing (without labels...