Characteristics of Independent Claim: A Corpus-Linguistic Approach to Contemporary English Patents

Abstract

This paper presents a corpus-driven linguistic approach to embodiment in modern patent language as a contribution to the growing needs in intellectual property rights. While there is work that appears to fill a niche in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the present study suggests that a statistical retrieval approach is necessary for compiling a patent technical word list to expand learner vocabulary size. Since a significant percentage of technical vocabulary appears within the range of independent claim among claim lexis, this study examines the essential features to show how it was characterized with respect to the linguistic specificity of patent style. It is further demonstrated how the proposed approach to the term independent claim contained in the patent specification is reliable for patent application on an international level. For example, clausal types that specify how clauses are used in U.S. patent documents under co-occurrence relations are potential for patent writing, while verb-noun collocations allow learners to grip hidden semantic prosodic associations. In short, the research content and statistical investigations of our approach highlight the pedagogical value of Patent English for ESP teachers, applied linguists, and the development of interdisciplinary research.