Small Can Be Big in Patent Law
Most people who are familiar with patents know that the fewer words a claim has, the broader its scope. New clients who are not familiar with patents sometimes mistakenly think that the more features a patent's claim recites, the "broader" the claim is. They quickly learn the truth.
Even when they have few words in their claims, many patents have quite long specifications. For example, a patent a client is thinking of asserting is huge by any stretch of the imagination. Its specification is scores of pages long. An advantage to a long specification is that it probably describes multiple "embodiments" of the claimed inventions. That can become important during licensing negotiations.
On the other hand, I've also seen some very short patents asserted. For example, CNET reports that a company called Tune Hunter is asserting a patent that is 6 1/2 pages long (including 3 figures, about 3/4 page for 2 claims, the cover bibliographic page, and a short description) against some huge companies: Samsung, Apple, Motorola, Amazon, Verizon Wireless, LG Electronics, AT&T Mobility, and others. The patented technology "provides the listener with convenient means to record a segment of the music in which he/she is interested. The recorded music segment is played back into an apparatus which can identify the song based on the play back and provide the user with information on the identified song such as title, singer or artist, composer, producer, etc., and provide related purchasing information. " (U.S. Patent No. 6,941,275, Abstract.) Apparently Tune Hunter's iPhone application is quite popular.
