*2.1.1 Description*

Regarding the description, article 24 of the LPI provides that: "The description shall describe the object clearly and sufficiently, as to enable reproduction by an expert, and indicate, when applicable, the best mode of execution.".

Thus, the description includes the details of the applicant/inventor's invention, clearly explaining its practical implementation to third parties and a person skilled in the art. Consequently, it is one of the most relevant parts of the patent application and is expected to have more pages. Therefore, the number of pages of description of a patent application is a variable relevant to its evaluation.

#### *2.1.2 Claims*

Regarding claims, article 25 of the LPI provides that: "The claims shall be based on the description, describe the particularities of the application, and provide a clear and accurate definition of the subject matter of the protection".

We note that, within a same patent claim's section, the claims may be classified as independent or dependent. Independent claims seek to protect essential and specific technical characteristics of the invention as a whole, while dependent claims are those that, while keeping the unity of invention, include all features of other previous claim(s) and define details of these characteristics and/or additional characteristics not deemed essential to the invention [10].

Therefore, according to the comprehensive content in the description, the claims specify, on a more accurate basis, the object of protection, i.e., define the scope of protection. In a recent study [11], the role of the characterizing term (the expression "characterized by") in the patent documentation for delimitation of industrial property rights is discussed in more details considering the history of the Brazilian and international legal framework.

In this context, we note that both the extent of the claims (number of patent claim pages) and the number of claims (total number of independent and dependent claims) are highly relevant to the examination of a patent application.

#### *2.1.3 Figures*

As provided for in article 19 of the LPI, the submission of drawings/figures in the patent application is optional. While the figures are not mandatory, we note that the majority of applicants and inventors include them in the documentation submitted for examination. Such fact points that figures are an important part of the patent application, and one of the main reasons therefor is that they facilitate reading and understanding of the subject matter under examination. Hence, the number of figures pages can also be relevant when examining a patent application.

#### **2.2 Cover sheet: bibliographic data of the patent documentation**

Information included in patent documentation (including bibliographic data in the cover sheet) is an important tool for technological research and development [12]. It is important to note that information included in the cover sheet of a patent document is identified by numeric codes, as the Internationally Agreed Numbers

for the Identification of Data (INID), and its specific standards are defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO.

Among the bibliographic data included in the cover sheet, we highlight: application number (21), number of the priority document, if any (31); filing date (22); priority date, if any (32); date of publication (43); name of the inventor (72); name of the holder of the rights on the patent (73); International Patent Classification (51); title of the invention (54); and abstract (57). A detailed description of these codes can be found in Appendix 1 of Standard ST.9 of the WIPO Handbook on Industrial Property Information and Documentation [13].

In this context, it is important to highlight that, as we intend to obtain variables relevant for evaluating and distributing patent applications for examination, among these bibliographic data, we are only interested in those already available from the filing until publication of the application, i.e., those that can be obtained before the patent examination process. Thus, in a first analysis, we focus on the identification numbers of the applications, filing date/year, inventors, priorities, and international patent classification (IPC), provided that the latter will be addressed in further details below.

#### **2.3 International patent classification (IPC)**

The IPC [14] allowed for standardization of documents from different countries with different languages and technical expressions. Pursuant to WIPO, it has an important role as it serves as: (i) an instrument for the orderly arrangement of patent documents aiming to facilitate access to the technological and legal information contained therein; (ii) a basis for selective dissemination of information to all users of patent information as a reference and/or knowledge; (iii) a basis for investigating the state of the art in given fields of technology; (iv) a basis for the preparation of industrial property statistics which in turn allows the assessment of technological development in various areas [15].

The IPC is divided into eight sections (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H). The sections are the highest levels of hierarchy of the classification. Each section is subdivided into classes, representing the second hierarchical level of the classification. Each class comprises one or more subclasses, indicating the third hierarchical level of the classification. Each subclass is broken down into subdivisions, referred to as "groups", which are either main groups (fourth hierarchical level of the classification) or subgroups (lower hierarchical levels dependent upon the main group level of the classification). We present below an example classification of the electricity area by using all hierarchical levels, from section to subgroup.

Example: H02M 7/48.

Where:

H Section (A, B, [ … ], H): Electricity;

H02 Class (two digits): Energy Production, Conversion, or Distribution; H02M Subclass (one letter): Apparatus for Conversion Between DC and AC; H02M7 Main Group (one or more numeric digits): Conversion of AC power input into DC power output;

H02M7/48 Subgroup – (at least two numeric digits): using discharge tubes with control electrode or semiconductor devices with control electrode.

We highlight that the IPC is revised periodically based on meetings with experts from WIPO member countries, and such revision is published and may be accessed through INPI and WIPO websites. We further highlight that a patent document may fall under more than one IPC symbol. This is due to the fact that it can have claims in more than one category (device and method, for example), be related to one or more areas of application, or even to specific functions.

*A Methodology for Evaluation and Distribution of Patent Applications to INPI-BR Patent… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98400*

The study of Harloff and Wagner [16], based on EPO data for modeling the examination time, defined that, among other factors that impact the complexity of a patent application, the total number of claims and the number of IPC subclasses are major direct variables of the application. Therefore, the number of IPC subclasses is also a variable to be considered when evaluating a patent application to be distributed.

#### **2.4 Studies using variables of patent documentation**

#### *2.4.1 Miscellaneous studies*

As seen previously, a patent application is basically composed of three main parts: description, claims and figures (if any). For description and figures, for example, the number of pages is a relevant variable. As for patent claims, the number of pages, number of claims, whether independent or not, etc. Additionally, bibliographic data present information that also become potentially relevant variables, such as IPC classification, inventors, filing dates and years, etc. In this context, there are some papers that use specific variables of patent documentation to determine specifications like: economic value, time effort applied to the technical evaluation, scope of patent protection, among others.

An economic value approach to European patents using their claims, references, among others as variables, is described in [17].

Other papers [18, 19] are related to methods for analyzing and assessing the scope of protection of a patent based on variables related to the patent claim scope. The first uses the number of pages of the first independent patent claim as a relevant variable. The second uses two variables: the number of words in the shortest independent patent claim and the total number of independent claims.

However, none of the papers mentioned address the use of the parameters of the patent application or data in the examination process to create a method for distributing the applications to examiners. In [20, 21], studies were carried out with evidence that, at the United States Patent and Trademark Office –USPTO, after the application was directed to a large technological area (for example, electricity or chemistry), its subsequent designation to a specific examiner was nearly random. On the other hand, [22] found evidence that, at USPTO, applications of the same applicant, as well as applications with similar abstracts and titles, tend to be distributed to the same examiner. The authors suggest that, although such methods seek to follow the principle of efficiency, a balance with the principle of justice should be pursued as well. On the other hand, they emphasize that a random distribution favors the principle of justice, but fails to follow the principle of efficiency, which counts on the expertise of the examiners in certain examination subclasses.

In view of the foregoing, one has to take into account not only factors contributing to efficiency, such as distribution of application by subclasses pursuant to the examiners' education/interest, but also factors contributing to better balance, i.e., variables including the amount of data and the complexity of the patent applications to be examined. Consequently, justice should not be confused with randomness.

#### *2.4.2 Workload balancing, voluminosity, and complexity of patent applications*

As already seen, the workload in each patent office is one of the indicators affecting the quality not only of patent examination, but of patent systems as a whole. It is also worth mentioning that the increased workload of examiners, and the consequent decrease in time for examining a patent application, may adversely affect the quality of patents granted, i.e., it tends to increase the granting of improper patents. Thus, it is important to seek better workload distribution and balancing to the examiners, as to reconcile working conditions and results.

Papers [23, 24] show that the volume of patent applications at EPO has been increasing throughout the years, and they relate the volume of patent application to an essentially two-dimensional problem, with two predominant variables: total number of pages of the patent application and number of claims. In this context, the total number of pages would be related to the level of description of the invention at stake and the total number of claims to protection scope. The authors also emphasize that these variables would be correlated, in different proportions, to the number of priorities, inventors, and IPC classifications. As limitations to the study, they mention that it would be better to evaluate the amount of independent and dependent claims, although this information is not easily accessible in data sources available.

To assess the hypothesis of technological complexity of a patent application, another study [25] uses a mathematical model considering the number of inventors, the number of IPC classes, and the number of references to previous patents. The authors emphasize that the increased volume of data may be related to both the technical complexity of the invention/application and a strategy matter, i.e., the desire to maintain certain know-how rather than actually protect it. It is important to highlight that, with the results of the model applied, the authors suggest that an increased number of inventors tend to create more complex inventions, requiring a greater number of pages and claims so that such inventions are described in details.
