General Principles and Object of Claims: Claims are considered to be the most important part of the patent document. In a complete specification the description is followed by the Statement of Claims. Since the claims constitute the legal part for claiming the protection of the patent rights, it is imperative that the claims should be drafted carefully to cover all the aspects of the protection being sought while observing the following points:

• Each claim should be in a single sentence and should be clearly and worded
• Claim(s) should be succinct and should not involve unnecessary repetition
• A claim (s) should not be verbose.
• A claim is the statement of technical facts expressed in legal terms defining the scope of the invention sought to be protected.
• No monopoly is obtained for any matter described in the complete specification unless it is claimed in the claims. What is not claimed in the ‘claims’ stands disclaimed, and falls open to the public use, even if the matter is disclosed in the description.
• Claims define the boundaries of legal protection sought by the patentee and form a protective fence around the invention which is defined by the words and phrases in the claims.
• The object of claims is to define clearly the scope of the invention with conciseness, precision and accuracy the monopoly claimed, so that others may know the exact boundaries of the area of protection in which they should not trespass.
• Their primary object of claims is to limit and not to extend the monopoly unduly and, simultaneously; also let others know when they are infringing on the rights of the patentee.
• Each claim is evaluated on its own merit and, therefore, if one of the claims is objected, it does not mean that the rest of the claims are invalid.

It is therefore important to make claims on all of the invention to ensure that the applicant gets the widest possible protection.