Appeal No. 96-2692
Application 08/310,892
Appellants' claims 1, 7 and 15 recite "whereby a
redistribution of the distributed data subsets that . . .
minimizes the number of operations, passes data the minimum
distance necessary, and minimizes buffer memory requirements
is achieved." On pages 8 and 9 of the answer, the Examiner
argues that Appellants’ claims are indefinite because they do
not previously set forth the operations, the minimum distance
and buffer memory requirements.
Appellants argue in the reply brief that since a
whereby clause is considered to be merely an embellishment on
the claim to aid understanding, the proper stance for the
Examiner to take is to give no patentable weight to statements
made in the whereby clause. Appellants argue that it is
improper to reject the claim because specific terms in the
whereby clause are not found in the body of the claim.
However, Appellants' argument does establish that
the claim language is indefinite. The proper determination
under
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