Appeal No. 1997-3240
Application 08/176,940
In response to Appellant’s arguments, the Examiner on
page 4 of the answer points out that the broad language of
claims 1 and 8 merely includes the memory allocation scheme of
McEntee except for the simultaneously entering of the code
words. The Examiner further points out that Appellant did not
define the different encoding levels for entering data. To
modify the teachings of McEntee, the Examiner, on page 5 of
the answer reasons that simultaneously entering of data is
well known and common in the art and increases speed.
As pointed out by our reviewing court, we must first
determine the scope of the claim. “[T]he name of the game is
the claim.” In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362, 1369, 47 USPQ2d
1523, 1529 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Claims will be given their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the
specification, and limitation appearing in the specification
are not to be read into the claims. In re Etter, 756 F.2d
852, 858, 225 USPQ 1, 5 (Fed. Cir. 1985). Our reviewing court
further states in In re Donaldson, 16 F.3d 1189, 1193, 29
USPQ2d 1845, 1848 (Fed. Cir. 1994) that “[t]he plain and
unambiguous meaning of paragraph six is that one construing
means-plus-function language in a claim must look to the
8
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