Appeal No. 97-2963 Page 5
Application No. 08/284,728
claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
determinations which follow.
Written description
We will not sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 1 to
13, 15 to 19 and 21 to 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.
The test for determining compliance with the written
description requirement 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. See
Vas-Cath Inc. v. Mahurkar, 935 F.2d 1555, 19 USPQ2d 1111, 1116
(Fed. Cir. 1991) and In re Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366, 217 USPQ 1089,
1096 (Fed. Cir. 1983). Thus, a rejection based on the written
description requirement is fully defeated by a specification
which describes the invention in the same terms as the claims.
See In re Bowen, 492 F.2d 859, 864, 181 USPQ 48, 52 (CCPA 1974).
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007