Constraint 1: Verb Nominalization
Method Claims with "comprising"
In French patent practice, when a method claim uses "comprising" (comprenant), subsequent steps must be nominalized (turned into nouns), not left as infinitive verbs. Generic NMT models default to infinitive constructions because they are statistically more common in non-patent French, creating legally invalid claim structures.
Corpus status:
4 cases
— Active. New cases added as documented from ongoing HITL review.
| ID | Error Type | Case Summary | |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1-001 | Under-Nominalization | Method Claim Preamble Compliance — "comprising" Trigger Enforcement. A photonics patent method claim used "directing" (gerund), which generic NMT translated as diriger (infinitive). French patent law (EPC Art. 84) requires nominalization to l'orientation after comprenant. The aligned model utilizes relation extraction to enforce the comprenant → Noun morphology, preventing syntax-based rejections. | View PDF |
| C1-002 | Hyper-Correction | System vs. Method Differentiation — Preventing Hyper-Correction. A LiDAR system claim used "configured to" followed by infinitives. The model, over-fitted to method claims, incorrectly nominalized these verbs (l'orientation instead of diriger), creating a nonsense system description. The alignment protocol distinguishes between comprising (Noun trigger) and configured to (Infinitive trigger) as structurally distinct command types. | View PDF |
| C1-003 | Hyper-Correction | System vs. Method Morphology — Trigger-Differentiation Rule. A LiDAR system claim used "configured to" followed by a list of functions. The model, over-fitted to method claim rules, incorrectly nominalized the second verb (l'orientation) instead of preserving the infinitive (diriger). The alignment protocol implements a "Trigger-Differentiation" rule to distinguish between comprising (Noun trigger) and configured to (Infinitive trigger), ensuring grammatical consistency across parallel structures. | View PDF |
| C1-004 | Oscillation |
Morphological Oscillation & Vertical Consistency — Claim 13 (Ophthalmic Optics).
In multi-step method claims, French patent practice requires strict
grammatical parallelism: once nominalization is established as the list
form, every subsequent step must follow suit. Generic NMT translates
sentence-by-sentence, ignoring vertical context, producing a chaotic
"Yo-Yo" mix of infinitives and nouns within the same claim. In Claim 13
of a lens manufacturing patent, the model correctly nominalized Step (iii2)
(sélection de données) yet reverted to infinitives for Steps
(iii1) and (iii3) (déterminer, fournir) instead of the
required la détermination and la fourniture. Beyond
professional register, this oscillation risks Article 84 EPC objections
for lack of clarity and conciseness, and flags the filing as raw machine
output to the examiner. The alignment protocol enforces a
Constraint Propagation Protocol: it anchors the grammatical form of the
first list item, locks a FORCE_POS_TAG = NOUN constraint
across all sibling steps, and applies a negative RLHF reward whenever
the model reverts to an infinitive after a correctly generated noun.
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View PDF |