To demand as one's
own or as one's right; to assert; to urge; to insist. A cause
of action. Means by or through which claimant obtains possession
or enjoyment of privilege or thing. Demand for money or property
as of right, e.g. insurance claim. U.S. v. Tieger, D.C.N.J., 138
F.Supp. 709, 710.
With respect to claims
to a negotiable instrument of which a holder in due course takes free,
the term "claim" means any interest or remedy recognized in law or equity
that creates in the claimant a right to the interest or its proceeds.
Right to payment, whether
or not such right is reduced to judgment, liquidated, or unliquidated,
fixed, contingent, matured, unmatured, disputed, undisputed, legal,
equitable, secured, or unsecured; or right to an equitable remedy for
breach of performance if such breach gives rise to a right to payment,
whether or not such right to an equitable remedy is reduced to judgment,
fixed, contingent, matured, unmatured, disputed, undisputed, secured,
or unsecured. Bankrupcy Code §101.
In conflicts of law,
a receiver may be appointed in any state which has jurisdiction over
the defendant who owes a claim. Restatement, Second, Conflicts,
§369.
In patent law, a claim
is an assertion of what the invention purports to accomplish, and claims
of a patent define the invention and the extent of the grant; any feature
of an invention not stated in the claim is beyond the scope of patent
protection. Smith v. ACME General Corp., C.A.Ohio, 614 F.2d 1086,
1088.
[Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, p. 247]