Commentary
During the drafting stage of a patent specification, the
question often arises as to how much information should be included
in the detailed description for enablement purposes. Of course, it
is important to include substantial information relating to each of
the "essential features" of the invention, which are
those feature that either support the claims or provide a clear
enough and complete enough description of the invention and (for
Australian law purposes) the best method then-known of performing
it - especially those features that give rise to the advantages of
the invention over and above the prior art. However, often it is
not feasible or practical to add a highly detailed description of
each and every feature mentioned in the patent specification, as
Applicants would need to reproduce large amounts of published text
to show the variants known in the prior art, causing patent
specifications to run to hundreds of pages in length. This is
