Architecture, implementation, and which one to claim

Three levels, one right answer

Too abstract and the claim covers a result rather than a means, which attracts subject-matter and sufficiency objections and rarely survives.

Too specific and the claim recites your build - this library, this data structure, this sampling rate - and a competitor simply uses a different one.

The right level is the functional relationship that produces the technical effect: the ordering of steps, the timing relationship, the feedback path, the way two components interact. That is what a competitor would have to reproduce to get the same benefit.

A practical exercise

Describe the invention to a colleague in another team in three sentences, without naming any of your specific technologies. If it still makes sense and still sounds like it would work, that is roughly the claim level.

Then ask what the cheapest, ugliest version a competitor could ship looks like. If your claim does not catch it, you are still too specific.

What to actually do

• Claim the functional relationship, not the build.
• Describe it without naming your specific technologies and see if it survives.
• Test claim 1 against the cheapest competitor version you can imagine.
• Put the specific implementation in dependent claims and the description.