“But that was always so, wasn’t it”

The obvious answer is that RS is saying an emphatic “NO” to this question, MaxDrei.

As to “Or is it the clients, that react negatively to patent attorneys who resort to the word “said” to pimp up their claims?” — I found this to be the most amusing of your comments.

As to: “ Or is it that increasing numbers of claims in issued US patents are being written by patent attorneys not within the USA?” I would wonder what is your basis for this. The rising proportion of foreign filers alone? Do you really think that foreign filers do not use US attorneys to write the US claim sets? On what basis do you make that supposition?

As to your last comment, I see more misdirection than direction there, as no one ever indicated that a move to ‘more colloquial’ requires a “single change” type of analysis as a driver, let alone that “single change” being any one particular word.

Certainly, the relative use at the start indicates a difference in kind for “said” as opposed to the charted words; although pairing “said” with “means” is a bit odd, given that “means” carries its own more fully (and direct) set of legal guidelines. Perhaps the most glaring point here is the absence of another more fully (and direct) set of legal guidelines and the related trend of the Jepson claim format (which should be on the graph with the optional “means plus” claim format.

What would also be beneficial to the larger discussion is a trend line as to what Malcolm likes to push: claims which delineate SOLELY single** objective physical structure.

** I have modified Malcolm’s “objective physical structure” to reflect the more ardent level of “solely” and “singular” to reflect the fact that once one entertains claims that cover more than “solely” or “singular,” one HAS employed the Ladders of Abstraction which is the mechanism that covers the Vast Middle Ground of using terms sounding in function (be those terms on their own OR reaching to full and proper use of the ‘Means’ option — that is, zeroing in on Malcolm’s actual grouping of his preferred – yet still optional – claim format.