What is the scope of Patent Protection ?

When creating the claims for a patent application, an inventor will want to ensure that the claims cover the entire scope of their invention. A granted patent will not protect anything beyond the scope of the claims. If the patent owner later files an infringement action based on the patent, they must show that the defendant manufactured, used, or sold a product or process that essentially duplicates one of the claims. (On the other hand, if the defendant can demonstrate that their product or process does not match the description for one of the claims, they may avoid liability for infringement.)

Independent and dependent claims

Independent claims are the more general claims in a patent. These are intended to provide an invention with the broadest possible scope of protection. In the application, dependent claims come after independent claims and are relatively narrow. They are intended to cover specific variations devised by a competitor.

A claim is considered independent if it can stand alone and is not dependent on any other claim in the patent. A claim is dependent if it incorporates the language of another claim in the patent, which can be either independent or dependent. Independent claims typically outline the overall elements of a product or process, whereas dependent claims focus on a specific component of it.