Which section of the patent application should be written first?

This suggested order allows you to craft good Summary paragraphs that are placed at the beginning of your application’s Detailed Description and Brief Summary sections. Also, this will help you write a concise Abstract.

These paragraphs represent prime “real estate” because they are the reader’s starting points as they go through your patent application.

No matter where the reader starts when learning about the invention, you want them to have a concise understanding of it. As such, you need to make a positive impact. These paragraphs should be so convincing that the reader can understand the invention within a few minutes.

Keep in mind that these paragraphs should be developed after you have written all of the other parts of the patent application. By doing so, you will have spent many hours thinking and writing about the invention. You will have practiced how to express the invention in words.

The Summary paragraphs and the Abstract are your attempts to explain the invention in a concise manner. Consider them a way to practice your 30-second pitch, except it’s to a patent examiner—not an investor. Simply put, you are quickly explaining the technical aspects of your invention to an examiner.

As you can see from the order above, you will write one claim to help you get started. In patent law, everything starts and ends with the claims.

Afterward, you will write the Detailed Description section. You should spend at least 10-25 hours writing this section. This gives you the practice you need to effectively explain your invention’s point of novelty. Einstein once said that if you cannot explain something simply, you don’t understand what you are explaining.

The Brief Summary should be treated as a formality. The claims must find support in other parts of the application. In this section, the claims are rewritten into sentence format so that their words have an antecedent basis in the other parts of the patent application. By rewriting the claims, you are practicing how to describe the invention in a formal tone. 

The Background helps you to explain the invention in context. I generally write a very short Background. There isn’t anything you can do here to convince the examiner that the invention is worthy of a patent. They won’t consult the Background to try to understand the invention.

The first paragraph of the Brief Summary and Detailed Description as well as the Abstract are some of the most important parts of the patent application. After all of the practice above, you now have the opportunity to explain the invention in a concise manner that focuses on your invention’s point of novelty. Write the full Detailed Description first, then the first Summary paragraph that goes into the Detailed Description and Brief Summary.

Writing the patent application in this order will help you craft great Summary paragraphs and an Abstract that examiners will appreciate.

Disclaimer: Use the information in this article at your own risk. It takes many years to learn how to draft a well-written patent application under the guidance of a senior patent attorney.