Verbs and Patents

Verbs establish the presence of sentences. In patents, particularly, declarative sentences (containing verbs) describe an invention.

An application writer uses the most appropriate verbs throughout the specification to explain and define the inventive features. The verbs used in patents should be unambiguous and avoid emotion. This helps to clarify the meaning of the sentences when interpreted by readers of the patent, e.g., courts, juries, other inventors, and patent users, etc.

There have been attempts to categorize verbs, e.g., Saussure, Jakob Grimm's "strong and weak Germanic verbs", Roget (i.e., Roget's Thesaurus) and by other linguists and philosophers. Recently, Beth Levin made an attempt to classify English Verbs in her "preliminary investigation" ["English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation"; Beth Levin, 1993, University of Chicago press]. In her book, she describes verb classes in which verbs are grouped according to their relationship with a subject and, where relevant, an object, i.e., "alternation". In Part 1, she describes various types of alternations and in Part 2, she lists the classes of verbs.

For example, in Part 2, Chapter 35, entitled "Verbs of Searching", she describes six classes: Hunt, Search, Stalk, Investigate, Rummage, and Ferret. The various alternations associated with these verb classes are described in Part 1, Section 2.11. The verbs in the "Search Class" include: advertise, check, comb, dive, drag, dredge, excavate, patrol, plumb, probe, prospect, prowl, quarry, rake, rifle, scavenge, scour, scout, search, shop, sift, trawl, troll, watch.

The verbs in this class are related by requiring use of the preposition "for" in a prepositional phrase that includes the object being "searched", e.g., A searched for OBJECT in B or A searched B for OBJECT, but NOT in the following alternant form: A searched OBJECT in B.

The verbs classes for "find" and "reveal" are the "Get Verb Class" and "Characterize Verb Class", based on their types of alternation.

At this time, the categorization of verbs continues to be studied based on various linguistic attributes and grammatical constructions. In the meantime, thesauri, such as Roget's Thesaurus and Rodale's Synonym Finder are good starting points for finding related words, including verbs, in an effort to find the verb that best describes a particular action or relationship in an invention.

Francis "Fran" Lorin
siberkhem.com