Measurements in patents...
...are almost never specified as an exact figure for the very good reason that doing so would make it extremely easy to "design around" such a specific figure, something that would reduce the whole patent system to chaos. Usually, where numbers are involved, they are used in a ratio fashion (if it is necessary to establish numeric relationships at all).
The whole concept behind the patent process is that protection is granted to someone who comes up with a "novel" idea. Novelty is key when considering granting protection, but not everyone realizes what "novelty" is.
A simple numeric change could be novel if it affects (as an example) a clarinet's bore, since there are some empirical limits to what can happen to a clarinet bore before it ceases to work like a clarinet. But, normally numeric changes do not constitute novelty. An example here would be making a quilt five inches longer. Such a change is "novel" in that it is different, but there is an additional factor that bears on the patent process, that being that the change has to be not readily apparent to a reasonable person, the so called "obviousness" test.
Most patent applications break on one of these two issues. Novelty is assessed by examining the "prior art", those improvements that pre-exist the application. The "obviousness" issue is assessed by the patent examiners themselves, and I understand that this is the easiest way (relatively speaking) to break a patent.
...are almost never specified as an exact figure for the very good reason that doing so would make it extremely easy to "design around" such a specific figure, something that would reduce the whole patent system to chaos. Usually, where numbers are involved, they are used in a ratio fashion (if it is necessary to establish numeric relationships at all).
The whole concept behind the patent process is that protection is granted to someone who comes up with a "novel" idea. Novelty is key when considering granting protection, but not everyone realizes what "novelty" is.
A simple numeric change could be novel if it affects (as an example) a clarinet's bore, since there are some empirical limits to what can happen to a clarinet bore before it ceases to work like a clarinet. But, normally numeric changes do not constitute novelty. An example here would be making a quilt five inches longer. Such a change is "novel" in that it is different, but there is an additional factor that bears on the patent process, that being that the change has to be not readily apparent to a reasonable person, the so called "obviousness" test.
Most patent applications break on one of these two issues. Novelty is assessed by examining the "prior art", those improvements that pre-exist the application. The "obviousness" issue is assessed by the patent examiners themselves, and I understand that this is the easiest way (relatively speaking) to break a patent.