Appeal No. 97-1872
Application 08/371,620
interpretation to be given to the language “release material”
found in each of the independent claims on appeal. The
examiner is of the view that the term may be broadly
interpreted so as to read on the support web 18 of Instance
‘043 and/or the support web 26 of Instance ‘686 (answer, page
9), whereas appellant argues that the “release material”
language of the claims is not met by the support webs 18 and
26 of the respective references.
Like appellant, we do not believe that the ordinarily skilled
artisan would consider that web 18 of Instance ‘043 and/or web
26 of Instance ‘686 provides a “release material” when such
language is given its broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with appellant’s specification as such would be
understood by one of ordinary skill in the art (In re Sneed,
710 F.2d 1544, 218 USPQ 385 (Fed. Cir. 1983); In re Tanaka,
551 F.2d 855, 193 USPQ 138 (CCPA 1977)). The disclosures of
the present application, the Instance ‘043 patent, and the
Instance ‘686 patent are consistent in their use of terms like
“release material,” “backing of release material” and “release
backing material” to describe the web of material that carries
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