Closed Transition
A closed transition usually uses the words "consisting of". Use of this phrase limits the preamble to exactly what follows and nothing more. An example would be a patent claim for a pencil, which might say in the preamble "a writing device", followed by the closed transition "consisting of", and concluding with a description such as "a cylindrical piece of lead, graphite, or another material similarly capable of leaving a mark when drawn against a surface, and a second surrounding material encasing the first". A third party who sold pencils including both a cylinder of writing material and a casing material, but added to his pencils an eraser fixed to one end, would therefore not be in violation of the patent. Use of such a transition makes it easy for a competitor to compete with the patented product without infringing it, because it allows the competitor to sell a similar device so long as the competitor makes an addition to what is claimed. However, it also may assist the patent owner in avoiding prior art, which might otherwise block the patent from issuing.
Read more about this topic: Transitional Phrase
Famous quotes containing the words closed and/or transition:
“Since time immemorial, one the dry earth, scraped to the bone, of this immeasurable country, a few men travelled ceaselessly, they owned nothing, but they served no one, free and wretched lords in a strange kingdom. Janine did not know why this idea filled her with a sadness so soft and so vast that she closed her eyes. She only knew that this kingdom, which had always been promised to her would never be her, never again, except at this moment.”
—Albert Camus 1013–1960, French-Algerian novelist, dramatist, philosopher. Janine in Algeria, in The Fall, p. 27, Gallimard (9157)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)