一、Your client, Mr. Smith, had filed an U.S. patent application with the U.S. Patent andTrademark Office six months ago. He would like you, a registered patent attorney inR.O.C., to file a counterpart patent application with our Intellectual Property Officeclaiming the priority date of said U.S. patent application. The contents of the claims ofsaid U.S. patent application include, among others, “means for printing documents….”Given that a means-plus-function claim contains a verb followed by the “ing”, thisgrammatical English-style expression is not inherent in Chinese language, e.g., nowherecan a Chinese character plus the “ing” be found in any form of literature. Mr. Smith asksyou to provide pertinent suggestions in English to him regarding his concerns:
⑴ Whether the means-plus-function claim is acceptable by our patent system?（5 分）