In the majority of the cases agreement is reached on how best to define the invention to meet the nonobviousness requirement. The Patent Law also imposes standards on the written application itself . The application is written to be read by a person already familiar with the technical or business field, and therefore does not have contain basic knowledge needed to understand the invention in context. If drawings, formulas or diagrams are necessary for clear understanding of the invention, they must be included. Examples and data are often included in an application to aid in defining the full scope of the invention or establishing its utility.
Claims are the numbered paragraphs at the end of an application which legally define the invention.
The law requires a rather formalized format for claims. A U.S. patent commonly has numerous claims, each of which defines the invention in a different manner. Usually the first claim is the broadest definition of the invention, and the subsequent claims focus on narrower scope definitions or highlight specific important variants or embodiments of the invention. However, a provisional patent lapses after one year, and a related regular application with claims must be filed during that year if the inventor wants to continue to seek a patent on the invention. A patent application must be self-contained .