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Part of
Engagement in Professional Genres
Edited by Carmen Sancho Guinda
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 301] 2019
► pp. 259–276

Chapter 14
How much do U.S. patents disclose?

A generic game of hide-and-seek

| Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

U.S. patents, contrary to what may be expected, are essentially vague documents where engagement with the reader is minimized. In general, patent drafters typically exploit several vagueness strategies with the purpose of concealing information that may enable their competitors to claim alternative inventions. Within a Discourse Analysis and Applied and Corpus Linguistics framework, this chapter describes some likely incongruities between the legal requirements for the disclosure of the invention and the actual language used in U.S. patents, and illustrates them with examples from a corpus of 1,001 samples. Finally, linguistic corpus evidence is linked to justifications for non-disclosure provided by scholars from diverse fields such as Applied Linguistics, Rhetoric, Economics, Philosophy, and Law.

Keywords: writer engagement, patent disclosure, genre analysis, Corpus Linguistics, vagueness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology used for the study
  • 3.Textual references to reader and writer
  • 4.Modals for directives and possibility-appraisal
  • 5.References to shared knowledge
    • 5.1Linking language in claim preambles
    • 5.2“-ble” adjectives
    • 5.3Shared technical knowledge and terminology
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.301.14ari
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