Appeal No. 1999-1990 Page 4
Application No. 08/635,599
Determining whether a reference anticipates a claim
involves a two-step analysis. The first step is to construe
the claim to determine its meaning; the second step is to
compare the properly construed claim to the disclosure of the
reference to assess whether that disclosure meets all the
limitations of the claim. In applying the second step, we3
note that anticipation by a prior art reference does not
require either the inventive concept of the claimed subject
matter or the recognition of inherent properties that may be
possessed by the prior art reference. See Verdegaal Bros.
Inc. v. Union Oil Co., 814 F.2d 628, 633, 2 USPQ2d 1051, 1054
(Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 827 (1987). A prior art
reference anticipates the subject of a claim when the
reference discloses every feature of the claimed invention,
either explicitly or inherently (see Hazani v. Int'l Trade
Comm'n, 126 F.3d 1473, 1477, 44 USPQ2d 1358, 1361 (Fed. Cir.
1997) and RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Systems, Inc., 730
F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984)); however,
the law of anticipation does not require that the reference
3 See, e.g., Elmer v. ICC Fabricating, Inc., 67 F.3d 1571,
1574, 36 USPQ2d 1417, 1419 (Fed. Cir. 1995).
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