Mechanism of operation vs. system model

Most often in the course of ana­lys­is we use the term mod­el, less often mech­an­ism. The thing is that the term mech­an­ism appears when we want to explain some­thing, e.g. “the mech­an­ism of gen­er­at­ing a dis­count on an invoice”. The thing is that the term mech­an­ism appears when we want to explain some­thing, e.g. “the mech­an­ism for gen­er­at­ing a dis­count on an invoice”. But here beware! A mod­el (block dia­grams, for­mu­lae, etc.) is doc­u­ment­a­tion, a copy­righted descrip­tion. The mech­an­ism is what we under­stood by read­ing these doc­u­ment­a­tion (mod­el), because the mech­an­ism is pro­tec­ted know-how. The con­tent of the applic­a­tion to the Pat­ent Office is the mod­el (descrip­tion), but what we pat­ent is the mech­an­ism invented/developed.

Source: Mech­an­ism of oper­a­tion vs. sys­tem mod­el – Jarosław Żeliński IT-Consulting