1. Read

   ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/CLAUDE.md

   . If it contains

   [PLACEHOLDER]

   , stop and direct to

   /ip-legal:cold-start-interview

   . If the practice profile shows trademark- or copyright-only (no patent practice), say so and route the user elsewhere — this is the wrong tool.
2. Follow the workflow below.
3. Run intake. If the user pasted or uploaded a disclosure, read it. If not, ask the seven intake questions (what / problem / differences / inventors / public disclosure / status / technology area) in one batch and wait.
4. Run the six screens: novelty signals, obviousness flags, § 101 eligibility, public disclosure / bar dates, detectability, strategic value. Each screen gets a ✓ / 🟡 / 🔴 verdict with one-line reasoning.
5. Write the invention screen memo to the matter folder (if a matter is active) or the practice outputs folder. Apply the work-product header per role.
6. Bottom-line verdict: PURSUE (schedule prior-art search and attorney review) / INVESTIGATE (needs more info on a specific open item) / DECLINE (state the concrete reason). Never say "patentable."
7. Close with the decision tree (prior-art search / inventor follow-up / specialist review / decline + thank-you / trade-secret route) and the non-lawyer gate if the role is non-lawyer.
8. If the screen hit a within-one-year US disclosure or any public disclosure with foreign rights in scope, flag at the top: time-sensitive.

This is a first-pass screen by a non-specialist, not a patentability opinion. A patentability opinion requires a prior-art search, full claim construction, and the judgment of a registered patent attorney or agent. This screen does not do a prior-art search, does not assess what is in the art, and does not construct claims. It screens for the obvious disqualifiers (the invention is already on the market, it was publicly disclosed two years ago, it is plainly an abstract idea) and the obvious go-aheads (new mechanism, technical advance, recent conception, in-use secretly). Everything in between needs a prior-art search and a registered practitioner's review. This screen never concludes that something is "patentable" — it concludes that it "passes the initial screen, warrants investigation" or that it does not.

~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/CLAUDE.md

/ip-legal:cold-start-interview

• The company's patent filing strategy — offensive (building an assertion portfolio), defensive (filing to protect freedom to operate), hybrid, or licensing-revenue. This determines the strategic-value bar.
• The technology areas of interest — where the company files and where it does not. An invention that falls outside the areas of interest is often a decline even if the technical screen is clean.
• The filing budget posture — aggressive (file everything that passes the screen), selective (file the best few), or minimal (only what the business needs to protect). This shapes the output's recommendation.
• The approval chain — who signs off on a filing decision, and who the invention gets routed to if it passes the screen.

To screen this, I need:

1. What is the invention? In plain language — what does it do, what makes it work, what is the key idea.
2. What problem does it solve? What was broken or missing before.
3. How does it differ from what existed before? What did people do previously? What does this do differently?
4. Who invented it, and when? Names and rough conception date.
5. Has it been publicly disclosed? Published, sold, offered for sale, demonstrated at a conference, shown to a customer under an NDA, posted to a public repo, written up in a paper, included in a product release note. If yes, when and where.
6. Is it in use or planned? Shipping now? In a limited pilot? On the roadmap? Still on paper?
7. What technology area? (Software, hardware, mechanical, biotech, method-of-doing-business, AI/ML, etc.)

• "We just applied [known technique] to [new domain]" — e.g., "we took gradient boosting and applied it to predicting customer churn"
• "It's like [existing product] but for [X]" — Uber-for-dog-walking framing
• "Competitors do something similar" — if the disclosure itself says this, novelty is in question
• The disclosure describes a feature of an existing public product with minor tuning

• A new mechanism — a new way of doing the thing, not a new application
• A new combination that produces an unexpected result (not just additive — "faster," "smaller," "cheaper" are sometimes unexpected, sometimes obvious)
• Solving a problem the field had not solved — the disclosure explains why the prior approaches failed and how this one doesn't

• Combining known elements in a predictable way — putting a known sensor on a known machine to measure a known thing
• Routine optimization — "we tuned the existing parameter from X to Y and got better results"
• Design choice without functional advantage — aesthetic, ergonomic, or stylistic changes that don't change how the thing works
• Obvious to try — one of a small number of identified solutions with a reasonable expectation of success

• Teaching away — prior art expected the opposite result or said this approach wouldn't work
• Unexpected result — the combination produces something the POSA would not have predicted
• Long-felt need — the problem was known, and attempts to solve it had failed

• Pure business method without technical implementation — "a method of pricing widgets more efficiently"
• Mathematical algorithm on its own — even as dressed up in pseudocode
• Organizing human activity — scheduling, pairing, matching, reviewing — without a technical improvement
• Claim that reads as "do [known thing] on a computer" with no improvement to the computer itself
• AI/ML invention where the claim is the function (recommend, classify, predict) without the specific technical means that improves how the computer performs the function

• Technical improvement to the computer itself — new architecture, new training technique, new hardware/software interface, new security mechanism
• Specific technical means, not just results
• Improvement to a technical field (image processing, compression, cryptography, robotics) with the technical means described

• A natural correlation ("if level of X is above Y, patient has Z")
• A naturally occurring substance (isolated gene, natural product) without significant human modification

§101 is a US standard. Other patent offices are different. The EPO's "technical effect" test (Art. 52 EPC) is materially more permissive for software and AI inventions than US §101 post-Alice. JPO and CNIPA also apply different standards. An invention that screens 🔴 under Alice may be perfectly eligible at EPO/JPO/CNIPA.

When the practice profile includes non-US jurisdictions: "This §101 screen is US-only. If you file internationally, the eligibility posture may be different — particularly for software, AI/ML, and business methods, which EPO is more permissive on. Don't decline based on US §101 alone if you have EP/JP/CN filing plans."

• Publicly disclosed, sold, or offered for sale more than 12 months ago in the US — 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) one-year grace period has run
• Any public disclosure, anywhere, before filing — absolute novelty bar in the EU, China, Japan, and most countries outside the US. If the business cares about foreign rights, this is potentially fatal even if US is still open.

• Publicly disclosed within the last 12 months — US one-year clock is running, foreign rights may already be lost. Urgent. Confirm the disclosure date and route to filing immediately.

• No public disclosure. Confidential customer demonstrations under NDA, internal use, beta releases to named parties under NDA, draft papers not yet submitted — usually not "public" for § 102 purposes, but depends on the facts. When the disclosure was to a customer or external party, even under NDA, flag the specifics for the prosecution team to assess.

• Papers submitted to journals or conferences (submission ≠ publication; but check the journal's policy and whether preprints were posted)
• Talks given at conferences, meetups, internal company events open to non-employees
• Posts to public repos, blogs, social media, or forums
• Product releases, even in limited beta
• Sales activity including quotes, RFP responses, and offers for sale
• Disclosures to investors or board members who are not under NDA

• Server-side algorithm with no observable output pattern
• Internal manufacturing process (e.g., a novel etch step in a semiconductor process)
• Data-pipeline or analytics methodology that happens inside a competitor's infrastructure
• Training data composition or training technique for an ML model — visible only through fine-grained probing, if at all

• Consumer product — visible in the product
• Published API, SDK, protocol — visible in network traffic or integration docs
• Physical mechanism in a distributed product — reverse-engineerable
• Compiled code with distinctive signatures in a distributed binary

• Offensive strategy (build to assert): is this asset assert-worthy? A narrow, easily designed-around patent has lower offensive value than a broad mechanism claim. Is the competitive landscape one where you would want to sue?
• Defensive strategy (build to protect FTO): does this cover a technology area where competitors are filing? A defensive filing in an area nobody files in is a wasted spend.
• Licensing / revenue strategy: is this licensable? Who would pay for it, and under what circumstances?

• Is this core technology (part of the product's differentiation) or peripheral (incidental to a side feature)? Core is worth more.
• What is the competitive landscape? Patent-heavy (semiconductors, pharmaceuticals) — file early or lose the race. Patent-light (many open-source-heavy software segments) — sometimes skip entirely and spend the money elsewhere.
• Is the technology area on the company's list of tech areas of interest from the practice profile? If not, it is often a decline regardless of doctrine.

Invention screen memo — [invention title]

Bottom line: [PURSUE / INVESTIGATE / DECLINE]

[One sentence — the reason in plain language.]

---

Screen results

Screen	Verdict	Notes
Novelty signals	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning]
Obviousness flags	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning]
§ 101 eligibility	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning]
Public disclosure / bar dates	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning + dates]
Detectability	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning]
Strategic value	[✓ / 🟡 / 🔴]	[one-line reasoning, referenced to profile]

---

Open questions

Things that would change the answer. The inventor, the prosecution team, or a specialist would need to address these before this screen converts to a filing decision.

• [question]
• [question]

Next steps (decision tree)

Pick one and I'll help you build it out:

1. Commission the prior-art search — I'll draft the search request for [outside counsel / search vendor] with the claim concepts, inventors, technology classification, and any known references.
2. Go back to the inventor for more facts — I'll draft the follow-up questions on [specific open items above].
3. Route to outside counsel for § 101 / patent-vs-trade-secret judgment — I'll draft a transmittal summarizing what the screen found and what specialist judgment is needed.
4. Decline and send the standard thank-you — I'll draft the inventor thank-you and archive the disclosure with the declination reason.
5. Flag for trade secret instead — I'll draft a note to whoever owns trade-secret classification explaining why a trade-secret approach is a better fit.

• PURSUE — enough screens are clear (or clearly fixable) to warrant a prior-art search and attorney review. This is NOT "patentable" — it is "passes the initial screen, investigation warranted."
• INVESTIGATE — one or more screens flagged something that needs more information, specialist review, or a clarifying question back to the inventor before a pursue/decline decision can be made. Name the specific open item.
• DECLINE — a screen hit a fatal flag (barred by disclosure over 12 months old with no foreign rights concern, plainly obvious, plainly abstract under Alice, outside the company's technology areas of interest, fundamentally undetectable with no trade-secret path). State the reason clearly.

This is a screening tool for your disclosure, not a patentability opinion. The decision about whether to file — and how — belongs to a registered patent attorney or agent. If this screen says PURSUE or INVESTIGATE, your next step is not to file or draft claims; it is to share this memo (and the underlying disclosure) with patent counsel. If there is no counsel engaged yet, [contact from profile / "your professional regulator's IP referral service — state bar in the US, SRA/Bar Standards Board in England & Wales, Law Society in Scotland/NI/Ireland/Canada/Australia, or your jurisdiction's equivalent"] is the starting point.