Look at several patents, and it is likely that the use of “said” in the claims of the patents is different. That is because there is really no set standard for the use of “said” in the claims.
There are currently three different practices used in writing patent claims. The first time an element or part is recited in a patent claim, it must be preceded by the indefinite article “a” or “an” (although some exceptions exist for “means” and plural recitations). For each repeated reference of an element, one practice is to use “said” preceding the element and use “the” for anything else. Alternatively, some practitioners precede everything with “said” upon repetition thereof. A third, and somewhat more recent practice, is to omit the use of “said”, and simply use “the” to precede everything repeated.
Currently, the USPTO is accepting claims written according to any of the three practices. It appears that as long as the practitioner is consistent in the usage of one of the practices, the USPTO Examiner will not object. Landis on Mechanics of Patent Claim Drafting agrees with this as it calls the use of “said” “unobjectionable, although perhaps overly legalistic” (see section 3:11). Thus, even though the use of “said” is still acceptable, it appears that the trend is moving towards simply using “the”.
I prefer to use "said" for only the first time that an element appears in any dependent claim, as a signal for the reader to look back to an earlier claim for the antecedent basis.
Posted by: Bill Heinze | January 16, 2006 at 12:30 PM