Schott Publishes "An Appeal to the New Patent Office Director: Repeal the Single Sentence Rule"

Last Friday, Dennis Crouch's Patently-O blog published an article by Stephen Schott of Volpe & Koenig entitled "An Appeal to the New Patent Office Director: Repeal the Single Sentence Rule."  Stephen Schott, An Appeal to the New Patent Office Director: Repeal the Single Sentence Rule, Patently-O, http://patentlyo.com/patent/2009/09/an-appeal-to-the-new-patent-office-director-repeal-the-single-sentence-rule.html (Sept. 18, 2009).

In this short article, the author proposes that the new leadership of the USPTO change the roughly 150-year-old rule that claims consist of a single sentence.  The author states "[w]riting claims in multiple sentences, while perhaps flaunting 150-plus years of claim-drafting tradition, promotes clarity … [n]ot only would the patent bar be happier for it, but so would the examiners who are charged with interpreting needlessly unreadable claims, as well as the judges and juries who examine claims in excruciating detail."  Id. at 4.

This article is a good read for those interested in amending MPEP § 608.01(m) (the single sentence rule).  The article can be found in its entirety here.

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