Glossary

Plain-English definitions for every term IPZilla uses.

32 terms, alphabetical, with the source case or article in mono. If a term is in italics in another doc page, it's defined here.

A

Amgen v. Sanofi (598 U.S. 594, 2023): SCOTUS decision invalidating Amgen's antibody-genus claims for failing to enable the full functional scope. Established the modern §112 enablement standard: the broader you claim, the more you must teach. Drives the cascade-4-couches doctrine.

B

Burroughs Wellcome: Burroughs Wellcome v. Barr Labs (40 F.3d 1223, Fed. Cir. 1994). Defines conception as the formation in the inventor's mind of a definite and permanent idea of the complete and operative invention. The applicable test for single-inventor AI-assisted cases under USPTO Guidance Nov 2025.

C

Cascade-4-couches: IPZilla's four-layer claim drafting structure: functional genus → structural Markush → preferred ranges → picture claim. Built so a layer falling under one attack does not collapse the others (severability).
CIL: Claim Interpretation Lattice — IPZilla's trade-secret module. Enumerates 10⁵ to 10⁸ interpretations of every claim across six axes (literal, DOE, Markush, jurisdiction, era, prosecution history), scores each one against the global prior art, proposes the optimal wording.

D

Doctrinal Hardening: IPZilla's third module. Wraps the optimal claim in the legal cartography: cascade-4-couches, plausibility statements, structural anchors, watermark ratios, preemptive terminal disclaimers.
DOE: Doctrine of Equivalents. Allows a patent to cover products that don't literally infringe but are equivalent in function-way-result. Limited by prosecution history estoppel (Festo v. Shoketsu, 535 U.S. 722, 2002) and the disclosure-dedication rule (Johnson & Johnston).

E

Enablement (§112): The §112 requirement that a patent's specification teach a person of ordinary skill how to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without undue experimentation. Calibrated by In re Wands factors and post-Amgen.

F

FFL: Foreign Filing Licence. The authorisation a national patent office (USPTO under 35 USC §184; INPI under L612-9 CPI; CNIPA confidentiality review) requires before an applicant can file abroad. Cascade-tracking foreign co-inventors is a frequent procedural failure mode.
FTO: Freedom to Operate. The analysis of whether a proposed product or process can be commercialised without infringing third-party patents. IPZilla's IP Radar runs holistic and element-wise FTO verdicts per patent.

G

G 1/15 (EPO Enlarged Board, 29 Nov. 2016): Established that partial priorities are admissible without limitation when a generic OR-claim covers alternative subject-matter, overruling the limited-number-of-clearly-defined-alternatives test of G 2/98.
G 1/24 (EPO Enlarged Board, 2025): Aligns the EPO with the UPC on claim interpretation. The description and figures must systematically be taken into account when interpreting the claims, even when the wording looks clear. Makes the Definitions section load-bearing.
G 2/21 (EPO Enlarged Board, 23 March 2023): Plausibility / post-published evidence. Post-published data can support a technical effect, but only if the effect is encompassed by the technical teaching of the application as filed and embodied by the same invention. Forces every effect to be declared in the spec at filing.
G 2/98 (EPO Enlarged Board, 31 May 2001): The 'same invention' test for priority. To benefit from a priority date, the claimed subject-matter must be derivable directly and unambiguously from the priority document. Relevant to every PCT consolidating multiple PROVs.

I

In re Cellect (Fed. Cir. 28 Aug. 2023): Holds that ODP (obviousness-type double patenting) must be assessed against the post-PTA expiration date. A terminal disclaimer filed after the reference patent has already expired does not save a continuation. Drives preemptive TD filing during prosecution.
INPI: Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle — the French patent office. The recommended first-filing venue for IPZilla customers because of the 26 € (13 € reduced) provisional fee, the English-language acceptance, and the FFL machinery under L612-9 CPI.
IP Radar: IPZilla's already-built patent landscape engine. Brief → SearchPlan → BigQuery against 130M patents → claim fetch (PEDS / OPS) → claim reading via Gemini Pro → element-wise FTO verdicts. Runs in roughly eight minutes for a typical brief.

K

KSR (KSR v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398, 2007): SCOTUS obviousness standard. Rejects the rigid teaching-suggestion-motivation test of the Federal Circuit; applies a flexible common-sense analysis. Negative-space sections in the spec are calibrated against KSR.

M

Markush: A claim format listing alternatives chosen from a defined group ('selected from the group consisting of A, B, and C'). The standard structural-genus tool for chemistry claims. IPZilla's Layer 2 of the cascade-4-couches.
MPEP: Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. The USPTO's internal handbook. §2138 covers conception; §2104.01 covers AI-related eligibility under Alice/Mayo. Cited frequently in prosecution.

N

Negative space: A spec section listing failed ratios, combinations, or molecules. Establishes non-obviousness (a PHOSITA would supposedly have tried these and failed), forecloses competitor reframing, strengthens sufficiency. Never claimed — only disclosed.

P

Pannu factors: From Pannu v. Iolab Corp. (155 F.3d 1344, Fed. Cir. 1998). Three-prong test for joint inventorship: significant contribution, qualitative quality, and not merely explaining well-known concepts. Post-USPTO Guidance Nov 2025, applies only to multi-inventor human cases — not to single-inventor AI-assisted ones.
PCT: Patent Cooperation Treaty. The international filing system that lets an applicant pursue patent protection in 150+ countries from a single international application. The 12-month deadline from PROV1 to PCT is the spine of the whole 12-month playbook.
PHOSITA: Person Having Ordinary Skill In The Art. The hypothetical reader against whom enablement, written description, definiteness, and obviousness are all measured. The character every spec is written for.
Plausibility: The post-G 2/21 EPO requirement that a technical effect, to be invoked at examination or opposition with post-published evidence, must already be plausibly disclosed in the application as filed. Forces explicit Field-and-Summary statements of every claimed effect.
Priority matrix: The mapping of every PCT claim to the earliest PROV that fully discloses it. Required for partial-priority analysis under G 1/15 and survival of priority attacks at the PCT/EP examination stage.
PROV: Provisional patent application. In France, a 'demande provisoire' under Décret 2020-15. Locks a priority date for 12 months at low cost (26 €, 13 € reduced at INPI). Never formally consolidated with later PROVs — the consolidation happens at the PCT.

R

Rolling provisionals: A sequence of provisionals filed at each major discovery during the 12-month window, each carrying its own priority date. Combined at the PCT via the multi-priority mechanism of Art. 8 PCT and Art. 88 EPC.

S

Swiss-type claim: EPO claim format for medical use ('Compound X for use in a method of treating disease Y') under Art. 54(5) EPC. The way to claim a method of treatment in Europe, where Art. 53(c) EPC excludes pure methods of treatment from patentability.

T

Terminal disclaimer (TD): A filing surrendering the portion of a continuation patent's term that would extend beyond the parent's expiration date. Used to overcome obviousness-type double patenting (ODP). Post-In re Cellect, must be filed before the reference patent expires to be effective.
Thaler v. Vidal (43 F.4th 1207, Fed. Cir. 2022): Federal Circuit holding that AI cannot be named as an inventor on a US patent application; an inventor must be a natural person. Aligned globally — UK Supreme Court [2023] UKSC 49, EPO J 8/20, France L611-6 CPI.

U

UPC_CoA_528/2024: Unified Patent Court Court of Appeal decision in Amgen v. Sanofi/Regeneron (25 Nov. 2025). Aligned the UPC with EPO sufficiency doctrine — functional features need not enable every conceivable embodiment, provided the skilled person can obtain suitable embodiments via reasonable trial and error.

W

Watermark ratio: A numerical example written at the precision of your model (e.g. 39.84% rather than 40%) so that a competitor's product matching that exact value is statistically near-impossible to have arrived at independently. Functions as a forensic signal of copying.