Sections

The Sections page is where you write the body of your patent application: the prose sections that surround the claims, from Field of the Invention through the Abstract. Each application carries a fixed set of sections determined by its jurisdiction, and everything you write here flows straight into the assembled document in the Preview panel.

The section set

Every application has the same core sections: Field of the Invention, Background of the Invention, Summary of the Invention, Detailed Description, and Abstract. These are required, and the browser tracks how many of them you have drafted.

Three more are optional:

  • Cross-Reference to Related Applications: references to parent, provisional, or related filings.
  • Brief Description of the Drawings: one entry per figure. Required by patent offices only when the application has drawings, so it is modelled as optional here.
  • Industrial Applicability: EP and PCT applications only; it does not appear for US applications.

An optional section that is empty simply drops out of the preview and export. You never file an empty heading.

Section browser

Opening the Sections page shows a card grid of the application's sections. Each card shows the section's opening text (or a description of what belongs there if it is still empty), a word count, an Optional tag where relevant, and a dot when the assistant has a pending edit waiting for review. The page header sums it up: how many required sections are drafted, and the total word count.

Click a card to open that section's editor. Once inside, you switch between sections from the breadcrumb at the top of the page, which lists every section and carries the same pending-edit dots. The browser's Back behaviour is sensible: however many sections you visit, Back returns you to the browser.

The editor

Each section is a rich-text editor. You write prose; the section saves automatically as you type, and the header shows a live word count.

Formatting depends on the section. Short, formal sections (Field, Abstract, Industrial Applicability) are plain text. Cross-Reference and Background allow bold and italic. The longer sections (Summary, Brief Description of the Drawings, Detailed Description) also support subheadings and lists, so you can structure embodiments or list figure entries properly. The formatting toolbar in the page header shows exactly what the current section supports.

References work the same way as everywhere else in Nodes-IP: type claim 1, FIG. 2, or an element name and it becomes a linked chip that survives renumbering, or press @ to insert one explicitly. See the References tab for the full system.

The Edit menu in the header also offers Copy, which copies the section to the clipboard as plain text with every chip resolved to its current label.

Find and replace

Press <kbd>Cmd</kbd>+<kbd>F</kbd> (or <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>F</kbd>) to open find and replace. It searches across every section of the application, not just the one on screen, with match-case and whole-word toggles. Replace all rewrites every matching section in one step; matches in the visible section are highlighted as you type. Reference chips are left intact, only the surrounding prose changes.

The assistant drafts and edits sections

The assistant can write section content for you: draft a Background from your prior art, generate the Brief Description of the Drawings from your figures, or rework a paragraph of the Detailed Description.

Assistant edits are never applied silently. Each one appears as a pending change:

  • In the editor, the proposed edit shows inline in suggesting style: deleted text struck through in red, inserted text underlined in green.
  • A card in the rail beside the editor sits next to each diff with Accept and Reject controls. Accepting applies the edit to the section; rejecting discards it.
  • A wholly new draft for an empty section appears as a single card at the top of the rail.
  • Edits to sections you are not currently viewing stay discoverable as dots on the browser cards and in the breadcrumb section switcher.

From sections to the assembled document

The Preview panel renders your sections as the outgoing document: title and bibliography first, then the sections in filing order, with the claim set slotted between the Detailed Description and the Abstract and the drawing sheets at the end. The claims themselves are drafted on the Claims page.

Formatting follows the application's jurisdiction. US applications get bracketed paragraph numbers ([0001], [0002]) running continuously across the sections; EP and PCT applications do not. Section headings render in document style (uppercase, centered) regardless of how they appear in the editor.

Sections belong to the application's working draft, and every checkpoint freezes its own copy of them; see Versioning. Word export and clipboard copy of the full document live in the Preview panel.