IANAL (just the OP) but - imagine you invent a self driving car, and you&#x27;d like to patent it.  Your lawyer tells you not to read prior art, because you don&#x27;t want to be liable for willful infringement. Also you&#x27;ve been living in a cave, so you don&#x27;t really know what prior art there is out there.  You write claims like this:<p>Independent claim: Self driving car.  (You really hope you get this, but it&#x27;s so broad, you probably won&#x27;t).<p>First dependent claim: The previous claim, where in the self driving mechanism is an actuator applied to a gas pedal. (Now you&#x27;re going after the specific way you accomplished the broad problem - hopefully, even if someone&#x27;s patented a self driving car before, they did it some other way, so you can protect your preferred category of solutions, and force competitors to take a different approach).<p>Second dependent claim: the first dependent claim, where the actuator is a brick. (If all else fails, you&#x27;ve at least protected the precise mechanism that you used - not enough to keep out a competitor, but at least enough to preserve your unique solution).<p>The patent office will often strike the independent claims but leave some dependent claims around, so you craft them strategically to get at least some protection.