申論題

一、Your client, Mr. Smith, had filed an U.S. patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office six months ago. He would like you, a registered patent attorney in R.O.C., to file a counterpart patent application with our Intellectual Property Office claiming the priority date of said U.S. patent application. The contents of the claims of said U.S. patent application include, among others, “means for printing documents….” Given that a means-plus-function claim contains a verb followed by the “ing”, this grammatical English-style expression is not inherent in Chinese language, e.g., nowhere can a Chinese character plus the “ing” be found in any form of literature. Mr. Smith asks you to provide pertinent suggestions in English to him regarding his concerns:

⑵ What, if any, are these associated means-plus-function claim regulations in our patent system.（15 分）