Point-of-novelty claiming, once a common way to draft U.S. patents, has nearly disappeared. According to a Patently-O analysis, only 76 of the roughly 325,000 utility patents issued in 2025 used a Jepson claim—about 0.03%. That is a steep drop from the early 1980s, when roughly 14% of utility patents used the format.
The decline may accelerate after a March 2025 Federal Circuit decision, In re Xencor. The court held that a Jepson preamble is a claim limitation and must be supported by the written description. The applicant must show that the features described as conventional were actually well known, and the amount of disclosure required grows with the unpredictability and newness of the field.
The ruling creates a double burden unique to Jepson claims: the preamble counts as an admission of prior art against the applicant, yet it still must be described like any other claim element. The source argues this makes the format even less user-friendly. European two-part claims, which are structurally similar, appear 12 to 16 times more often in U.S. patents, but they remain rare at under 1% of issued patents.