Appeal No. 98-2069
Application No. 29/052,369
ascertain the scope of the invention sought to be patented
using the disclosure as a guide.
Thus, the dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the
appellant's disclosure, considering the ordinary skill of the
designer in the art as of the date of the appellant's
application, would have aided a person of such skill in
determining the scope of the appellant's claim. The threshold
step in resolving this issue as set forth supra is to
determine whether a reasonable basis exists to question
whether the claim sets out and circumscribes a particular area
with a reasonable degree of precision and particularity.
With this as background, we analyze the specific
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, made by the
examiner of the claim on appeal.
The claim terminology found objectionable by the
examiner, i.e., "substantially," is a term of degree,
inherently imprecise as to its exact meaning. When a word of
degree is used, such as the term "substantially" in the claim,
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