functional claim
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 304 U.S. 364 - General Electric Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp. · 1938Most cited · 1,034 citing opinions
patent — vice of
A patentee may not broaden his product claims by describing the product in terms of function. The vice of a functional claim exists not only when a claim is 'wholly' functional, if that is ever true, but also when the inventor is painstaking when he recites what has already been seen, and then uses conveniently functional language at the exact point of novelty. A characteristic essential to novelty may not be distinguished from the old art solely by its tendency to remedy the problems in the art met by the patent.
How often courts cite the case defining “functional claim”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “functional claim” — 1,031 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.