How much of a patent can be copied without violation

Factual Questions
1

Not legal advice but more of a GQ

I am starting the process of writing a software patent. Yes I know that eventually I’ll need a profession to fully write it up but that’s not the issue right now. Suppose my software does 7 things to complete the process and a later company writes software that does 5 of the 7 things and adds a few wrinkles of their own. Can they claim that they did not violate my patent since they didn’t use all of the steps or added some of their own? In general, how much of the patent needs to be copied before its a violation?

2

You need to engage a lawyer.

There is no right answer here, it is all “it depends” . On how much innovation you have made, on how much if it was prior art, or obvious etc. On how distinct there methods are.

3

Let me try this again and maybe it’ll work better looking at patents in general.

I get a patent in which I make 4 claims. Another inventor makes a product that duplicates (I think that’s the right term) only some of my claims. Is that a violation? Is it a violation if they duplicate only one of my claims or must it be all 4 or is it somewhere in the middle i.e. whatever the judge thinks is enough for violating my patent?

4

Each claim is separate. If you violate one claim, you’re violating the patent. Each claim has to be novel. If your process involves 7 steps and each step is public domain but only the full combination is novel, you don’t itemize 7 claims; you itemize one claim.

The trick is to make the claims have the right breadth. On one hand, you want them as wide as possible, to collect on the widest range of applications. However, too much width makes a patent easier to break.

You can learn a lot about the issues to consider reading this paper about the windsurfer patent, which was eventually overthrown. Don’t assume that every conclusion in this paper is valid, but there’s much to learn from it.

http://www.ipfrontline.com/downloads/windsurfer_paper.pdf

5

So that explains why we see:
Claim 1 A framus constructed of unobtainium
Claim 2 The framus of Claim 1 integrating a heisenburg resonator

Because if there is no violation of Claim 1 (because it is unpatentable or there is prior art or doesn’t fall under Sect. 101), the integration of the resonator is patentable and therefore a violation occurred.