Appeal No. 96-0005
Application 07/722,599
With respect to claim 36 the appellants contend that there
is no teaching of a “recess” as they have illustrated in Figs. 5
and 6. We must point out, however, that it is well settled that
the claims in a patent application are to be given their broadest
reasonable interpretation during prosecution of a patent
application (see In re Zletz, 893 F.2d at 321, 13 USPQ2d at 1322)
and limitations from a pending application’s specification will
not be read into the claims (see Sjolund v. Musland, 847 F.2d at
1581-82, 6 USPQ2d 2027). Here, the appellants have only broadly
set forth in claim 36 the provision of a “recess to receive the
bow of the smaller watercraft when received in the berthing area
....” This being the case, we share the examiner’s view that the
Japanese publication teaches a recess as broadly claimed at 27 in
Fig. 13 and it would have been obvious to provide the watercraft
of Metcalf with such a recess in view of this teaching.
In view of the above, we will sustain the examiner’s
rejection of claims 19, 20, 36 and 37 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based
on the combined disclosures of Metcalf, Babb and the Japanese
publication.
Considering now the rejection of claims 62 and 63 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Metcalf, the examiner
has stated that:
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