Appeal No. 97-2734
Application 08/394,067
claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellants and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we have made the
determinations which follow.
We turn first to the examiner's rejection of
appealed claims 1 through 4 and 8 through 11 under 35 U.S.C. §
112, first paragraph, which rejection we understand to be
based upon the written description requirement of the first
paragraph of § 112. In general, the test for determining
compliance with the written description requirement of § 112
is whether the disclosure of the application as originally
filed reasonably conveys to the artisan that the inventor had
possession at that time of the later claimed subject matter,
rather than the presence or absence of literal support in the
specification for the claim language under consideration.
Further, it is also well settled that the content of the
drawings may be considered in determining compliance with the
written description requirement. See Wang Lab. Inc. v.
Toshiba Corp., 993 F.2d 858, 865, 26 USPQ2d 1767, 1774 (Fed.
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